Every sector is a health sector: expanding organizational health literacy to advance equity and trust

Trust in public institutions is low, while the systems that shape health and wellbeing are often difficult to understand, navigate, and influence. This commentary argues that organizational health literacy (OHL) offers a practical and equity-oriented framework for redesigning those systems, not only in healthcare but across sectors such as education, housing, environmental planning, social services, and across local government. OHL shifts attention from individuals' ability to understand complex information to organizations' responsibility to make information, services, processes, and decisions clear, accessible, culturally responsive, and accountable. Building on public health frameworks that recognize the conditions that produce health, we propose that OHL can help operationalize health equity by reducing administrative burden, improving communication, strengthening navigation support, and creating feedback loops with the people most affected by institutional decisions. We trace the evolution of health literacy from an individual-focused concept to an organizational responsibility, identify theoretical frameworks that can support adoption across diverse sectors, and describe mechanisms such as accreditation, grant requirements, workforce training, equity audits, community accountability structures, and performance measurement. Examples illustrate how unclear communication, fragmented workflows, inaccessible public processes, and nonresponsive documentation can deepen inequities, and how OHL strategies could reduce these harms. Future research should test implementation strategies, measurement approaches, costs, and equity outcomes across sectors.