Dr. Baker is Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine, and Associate Director of the Institute for Healthcare Studies at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago. Dr. Baker's research activities have focused on healthcare delivery for underserved populations and improving quality of care for chronic medical conditions. He was one of the Principal Investigators for the Literacy in Health Care Study, the first major study examining how often patients are unable to accurately read pill bottles, appointment slips, and the other written materials they encounter when they come to see a doctor. He was also the Principal Investigator for a large study of literacy, health status, and use of health care services that included over 3000 Medicare managed care enrollees in four cities in the United States. He was one of the developers of the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults, and he has published over 30 articles on the measurement of health literacy and the consequences of inadequate health literacy. His current work focuses on the relationship between literacy and mortality and the use of multimedia and other strategies to improve health communication between health care providers and patients.
Dr. Flores is Professor (with tenure) of Pediatrics, Epidemiology and Health Policy at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is also Director of the Center for the Advancement of Underserved Children and Director of the Pediatric Primary Care Research Fellowship in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He is on the editorial boards of Ambulatory Pediatrics and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, and a member of the Committee on Pediatric Research for the American Academy of Pediatrics. He is a member of the Expert Panel for the Department of Health and Human Services Health Care Language Services Implementation Guide, recently provided a Congressional Research Briefing, and he has testified in the U.S. Senate on Latino health and the Hispanic Health Improvement Act. He has served as a consultant and national advisory committee member for the American Medical Association, National Hispanic Medical Association, Sesame Street Workshop, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He received the 2006 American Academy of Pediatrics Outstanding Achievement Award in the Application of Epidemiologic Information to Child Health Advocacy. He has published 74 articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in such journals as JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics, and the Lancet, including many papers that address racial/ethnic and linguistic disparities in children's health and healthcare.
Dr. Freeman is president, founder, and medical director of the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention in New York, New York. Dr. Freeman is also senior advisor to the director of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He is responsible for strategies to achieve NCI's 2015 goal to eliminate cancer health disparities. He is a professor of clinical surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, also in New York. From 1974 to1999, Dr. Freeman was director of surgery at Harlem Hospital in New York and, for a 2-year period ending in 2001, Dr. Freeman served as the president and CEO of North General Hospital in New York. Dr. Freeman is a diplomat of the American Board of Surgery and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He has been medical director of the Breast Examination Center of Harlem, a program of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, since 1979. He was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997. Dr. Freeman served as national president of the American Cancer Society from 1988-1989. He pioneered the "Patient Navigation Program" which addresses disparities in access to treatment, particularly among poor and uninsured people. Based on this model, the Patient Navigator and Chronic Disease Prevention Act was signed into law by President Bush in June 2005. Dr. Freeman is past chairman of the President's Cancer Panel, to which he was appointed for four consecutive three-year terms, first by President Bush in 1991 and subsequently by President Clinton in 1994, 1997, and 2000.
Dr. Freimuth is the Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication and a Professor in the Department of Speech Communication and the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. Her major research interests center on health communication, specifically studying the role of communication in health promotion. Before joining the faculty at the University of Georgia, she served as Director of Communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for seven years. Prior to that position, she was Professor and Director of the Health Communication program at the University of Maryland. She is author of Searching for Health Information, co-editor of AIDS: Communication Perspectives, and author of chapters in several major books in health communication. Her research has appeared in such journals as Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Journal of Health Communication, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, and Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases. She won a Distinguished Career Award from the American Association of Public Health in 2003. She was selected as the first Outstanding Health Communication Scholar by the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association and was selected as the Woman of the Year at the University of Maryland in 1990.
Dr. Hibbard is a Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. Her work focuses on consumer decision-making and consumer roles in the care process. Recent work includes an assessment of the degree to which consumer driven health plans influence consumer behavior. Patient activation, health literacy, and the impact of public reports on consumers and providers are other areas of current research. Professor Hibbard serves on several advisory panels and commissions, including The National Advisory Counsel for AHRQ, National Health Care Quality Forum, and United Health Group Advisory Panel. Her work appears in recent issues of: Health Affairs, Medical Care, and Health Services Research.
Dr. Keil is a Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Yale University and Master of Morse College. Previously, he held the William R. Kenan, Jr. endowed chair in psychology at Cornell University. His research focuses on how people come to make sense of the world around them. Much of this research involves asking how intuitive explanations and understandings emerge in development and how they are related to notions of cause, mechanism and agency. These relations are linked to broader questions of what concepts are, how they change with development and increasing expertise, and how they are structured in adults. His work also explores how children and adults learn to navigate the division of cognitive labor that integrates both formal and informal scientific understanding. Dr. Keil received the NIH multi-year MERIT award in 2003 which provides long-term support for outstanding investigators. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology, with an emphasis in developmental, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977, an M.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1975, and a B.S. in Biology from MIT in 1973.
Rear Admiral Kenneth P. Moritsugu has filled the position of Deputy Surgeon General of the United States since October 1, 1998, serving as the principal assistant and advisor to the Surgeon General. From August 2006 to the present and from February to August 2002, he served as the Acting Surgeon General, in which he had responsibility to directly oversee nearly 6,000 Commissioned Corps medical personnel of the U.S. Public Health Service, and to function as the nation's top doctor. From December 1987 to September 1998, he was assistant bureau director and the medical director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Also an educator, Dr. Moritsugu is an adjunct professor of public health at the George Washington University School of the Health Sciences, and adjunct associate professor of preventive medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Dr. Moritsugu is board certified in preventive medicine and is a certified correctional health professional. He also holds fellowships in the American College of Preventive Medicine, the Royal Society of Health, and the Royal Society of Medicine. He received his Baccalaureate Degree with Honors in Classical Languages from the University of Hawaii in 1967, an M.D. from the George Washington University School of Medicine in 1971, and an M.P.H. in Health Administration and Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975.
Dr. Neuhauser is a Clinical Professor of Community Health and Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Her research, teaching and practice are focused on translating research findings into improved health interventions, including mass communication. She is especially interested in leveraging participatory approaches to improve the relevance of communication to meet the literacy, linguistic, cultural and other needs of diverse audiences. She is principal investigator of the UC Berkeley Health Research for Action Center that works with users to co-design and evaluate multi-media health communication resources that have now reached over 10 million households in the United States and overseas. She is an advisor to UC Berkeley's (CDC) Center for Infectious Disease Preparedness on strategies to improve risk communication for issues ranging from emerging diseases to terrorist events. She is a frequent advisor to state, federal and international workgroups about health interventions and communication. She was previously a U.S. health officer in West and Central Africa.
Dr. Park received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany in 1977. She is a professor in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Psychology and a research scientist at the Beckman Institute. She is Co-Director of The Center for Healthy Minds, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. Her research has focused on understanding the role of age-related changes in memory function at the basic level (through functional neuroimaging techniques and behavioral studies) as well as the implications of these changes for society (in cross-cultural studies and work in medical information processing). Dr. Park is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as a number of other scientific organizations. She chaired the Board of Scientific Affairs for the American Psychological Association, and is a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Society. She received the Distinguished Contributions to the Psychology of Aging Award from Division 20 of the American Psychological Association. She recently completed a term as chair of the NIH Scientific Review Panel for Cognition and Perception.
Dr. Pignone is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Associate Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine, and Director of the UNC Center for Excellence in Chronic Illness Care. He received his medical degree and residency training in primary care internal medicine from the University of California-San Francisco. He then completed fellowship training in clinical epidemiology and health services research through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UNC. Dr. Pignone's research is focused on chronic disease prevention and physician – patient communication about risk in primary care settings. His main areas of interest include heart disease prevention, colorectal cancer screening, and disease management for common chronic illnesses such as diabetes, depression, heart failure, and chronic pain. He has conducted research examining the role of literacy in physician-patient communication and its effect on health outcomes, including racial/ethnic disparities, in patients with chronic illnesses. He has developed and tested interventions to mitigate literacy-related disparities and to improve the use of appropriate preventive services.
RADM Royall is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and Director, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office of Public Health and Science, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is a Commissioned Corps Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service. RADM Royall leads prevention priorities for HHS and is a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health and to the HHS Secretary. Prior to this appointment, she was Acting Executive Director, President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and Senior Public Health Advisor, Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. Before joining OPHS, she was the Chief of Physical Rehabilitation in the Physical Rehabilitation Department, Federal Medical Center, Butner, North Carolina. RADM Royall earned a degree in Physical Therapy and a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Rudd is Senior Lecturer on Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her work centers on health communication and on the design and evaluation of public health community based programs. She teaches courses on innovative strategies in health education, public health program planning and evaluation, and health literacy. Dr. Rudd is focusing her research inquiries on literacy-related disparities and literacy-related barriers to health programs, services, and care. She is a research fellow of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy and serves as Principal Investigator for the Health and Adult Literacy and Learning [HALL]. She served the on the National Research Council Committee on Performance Levels in Adult Literacy and on the IOM Committee on Health Literacy and wrote sections of both National Academies' reports. Dr. Rudd wrote several other reports that are helping to shape the agenda in health literacy research and practice. They include the health literacy objective action plan of the Health and Human Services book, Communicating Health: Priorities and Strategies for Progress (2003), and the Educational Testing Services report, Literacy and Health in America (2004).
Dr. Schillinger is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine in the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine and is a practicing primary care physician at San Francisco General Hospital. He is nationally recognized for his translational, practice-based research with vulnerable populations. With a focus on health communication, chronic disease care, and literacy, he has carried out a number of studies in patients with diabetes and heart disease. He has published extensively on the relationship between literacy and health; quality of care; decision-making; and patient safety, and received the 2003 Institute for Healthcare Advancement Research Award for this work. He was recipient of an Open Society Institute Physician Advocacy Fellowship to work with California Literacy, a state-wide adult education organization. Dr. Schillinger recently completed a 6-month tenure as Visiting Scholar at the University of Chile School of Public Health, where he developed research programs in socioeconomic disparities in chronic disease prevention and care, and tobacco control. He returns to UCSF as director of a research center whose focus will be communication and population health. Dr. Schillinger is co-editor of the just published textbook Caring for Vulnerable and Underserved Patients: Principles, Practice, and Populations (2006, Lange series, McGraw-Hill). Dr. Schillinger is the proud father of twin 8 year old boys and is expecting a 3rd child in October (a girl... and only one!).
Dr. Smith is the Executive Vice President of the Academy for Educational Development, one of America's largest non-profit organizations. He is a co-author of the IOM report, Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion. Dr. Smith is also a co-founder of the Social Marketing Institute, a columnist and editorial board member of the Social Marketing Quarterly, the International Journal of Health Communication and Applied Environmental Education and Communication: An International Journal. He authored a recent book entitled Fostering Community Based Social Marketing and has published widely on communication for social change.
Dr. Whitehurst was appointed in 2002 to a 6-year term as the first director of the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The Institute includes the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, the National Center for Education Research, and the National Center for Special Education Research. Dr. Whitehurst previously served as U.S. assistant secretary for educational research and improvement. Prior to beginning federal service, he was Leading Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. During his academic career, Dr. Whitehurst published five books, and more than 100 research papers on language and reading readiness in children. He developed programs for enhancing children's language development that are widely used in preschool programs in the United States and other countries. Dr. Whitehurst received a Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1970.
Dr. Zarcadoolas is a sociolinguist working in the area of health and environmental literacy. Her research focuses on analyzing and closing the gaps between expert knowledge and public understanding of health and environmental issues. Dr. Zarcadoolas joined Mount Sinai School of Medicine after spending 15 years on the faculty of Brown University's Center for Environmental Studies where she taught courses on public perception of the environment and environmental communications and doing applied, collaborative research with communities. She recently completed a textbook on health literacy – Advancing Health Literacy: A Framework for Understanding and Action (with Andrew Pleasant, PhD., and Dr. David S. Greer, Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2006). The book develops an elaborated model of health literacy addressing the roles of fundamental literacy, science literacy, civic literacy and cultural literacy. She is presently writing a new book on communicating complex emergencies.
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Last revised: December 11, 2007