Health Literacy and HIT: Implications for the New Communication LandscapeThursday
This webinar was co-sponsored by the PCPCC Center for eHealth Information Adoption and Exchange and the Center for Consumer Engagement and will feature Dr. Christine Zarcadoolas from the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter and Dr. Sylvia Chou from the National Cancer Institute. At least half of all adults in the US are low literate and/ have inadequate health literacy (struggle to find, understand and use health information). Dr. Zarcadoolas will discuss health literacy, referring to her current research investigating patient usability of electronic medical records (EMRs). Dr. Chou will place EMRs into the dynamic context of consumer use of technology more broadly – internet, and mobile, and social media.
Dr. Christina Zarcadoolas is a sociolinguist and internationally recognized expert in health literacy and public understanding of health and science. Her research focuses on analyzing and closing the gaps between expert knowledge and public understanding. Her critically acclaimed book, Advancing Health Literacy: A Framework for Understanding and Action, (co-authored with Andrew Pleasant, PhD., and Dr. David S. Greer, Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2006) was reviewed by New England Journal of Medicine referred, which called it "required reading" for public health professionals responsible for developing new tools for communicating with patients and the general public.
Dr. Zarcadoolas has recently joined the City University of New York’s (CUNY) School of Public Health at Hunter to launch a Health Literacy initiative. Prior to this, she was as Associate Professor in the Preventive Medicine Dept. at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and had a long tenure as a faculty member of Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies. She has designed courses that include - “Health Literacy: Can the Public Be Healthy Without it”; “Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods, “ and “Floods, Pestilence and Plague: Communicating Complex Emergencies.” Dr. Zarcadoolas’ work is presently focused in three areas of research and teaching: chronic disease management, health informatics, and communicating complex emergencies. She is currently working on a new book entitled, “The Simplicity Complex” which explores the limits of simplification in a complex world.
Wen-ying Sylvia Chou is Program Director in the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the NCI. She has interests in social media and health communication, patient-provider communication, and mixed methods health research. As a sociolinguist, she has expertise in qualitative analyses of patient-provider interactions and illness narratives. She also conducts research on the role of technologies and social/participatory media on health communication. In her role as a Program Director, she is leading the effort to develop funding initiatives to examine the changing communication landscape brought on by social media. Dr. Chou came to the HCIRB from the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the NCI. She holds a MS and PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University and a BA in Music from Santa Clara University, CA. She received a Master’s in Public Health from the Interdisciplinary MPH program at UC Berkeley.