2005 Health Communication Conference

2005 Conference Home Agenda Speakers

Practical Solutions to the Problems of Low Health Literacy

Speakers and Presentations

Cynthia Baur, PhD
Health Literacy & the Department of Health and Human Services

Cynthia Baur, Ph.D. is the senior health communication and e-health advisor in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She leads the Office’s work on the Healthy People 2010 Health Communication Focus Area that includes the national objective to improve health literacy. She is the HHS staff lead for the health literacy component of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), and the chair of the HHS workgroup on health literacy. In fall 2003, Dr. Baur and the Office of the Surgeon General jointly managed Secretary Thompson’s Workgroup on Health Literacy, which elevated health literacy as a strategic element in HHS’s prevention initiative. She managed the development of the national health literacy action plan in Communicating Health: Priorities and Strategies for Progress (2003). Dr. Baur holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego.

Charles L. Bennett, MD, PhD, MPP
Cost-Effective Interventions to Improve Cancer Screening Rates

Improving Cancer Screening Rates Among Low-Literate Populations

Charles Bennett, MD, PhD, MPP is a hematologist/oncologist, Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University and Associate Director for the Veterans Administration Midwest Center for Health Services and Policy Research. His formal training includes an undergraduate degree with high honors in mathematics from Swarthmore College and a master’s and PhD degree (both in public policy) from the RAND Graduate School. His ongoing research and clinical activities focus on improving cancer screening and treatment care for persons of lower socioeconomic status. As part of this effort, his work has identified concerns related to low health literacy skills and the related barriers that result.

Dr. Bennett currently serves as the national study section chair for the American Cancer Society Health Policy Program and the Department of Veterans Affairs Equity portfolio and is a standing member on the National Institutes of Health study section Health Services and Outcomes Delivery (HSOD). He has been the principal investigator of over 20 grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the American Cancer Society and is currently the principal investigator on five R01 grants and one American Cancer Society grant. Most recently he was the recipient of a Pfizer Health Literacy Scholar grant focusing on low literacy and its impact on recruitment to the large prostate cancer prevention trial, SELECT.

Dr. Bennett’s publications have appeared in most major medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the Annals of Internal Medicine. He is the co-chair of the Cancer Control Program of the Robert H Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, one of the 41 National Cancer Institute designated comprehensive cancer centers. He has also served as a consultant to the Institute of Medicine panel on the quality of medical care (Mark Chassin MD MPP, chairman) and as a member to the panel on the National Institutes of Health and its efforts related to cancer and the medically underserved (Alfred Haynes MD PhD, chairman).

Jill A. Berger, MSA
Corporate Health Plan Strategies and Health Literacy

Jill A. Berger, MSA is the Vice-President, Health & Welfare Plan Management and Design for Marriott International, a leading hospitality company with 130,000 employees nationwide. Ms. Berger is responsible for the strategy, design and management of Marriott’s benefit plans – with an emphasis in health plan quality improvement. She serves on the NCQA Purchaser Advisory Council, is an active member of the Leapfrog Group for Patient Safety, and serves on the Executive Client Advisory Groups for Aetna, Kaiser and eValue8.

Prior to working for Marriott, she was with Kaiser Permanente, working in conjunction with General Motors as a Health Plan Manager. She managed the health plans in the eastern part of the U.S., representing 400,000 GM employees and retirees. Prior to working with General Motors, Jill managed the medical plans for Sears, Roebuck and Company. Jill obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount St. Mary’s College and her MSA from Johns Hopkins University.

Jay M. Bernhardt, PhD, MPH
Keynote Address

Jay M. Bernhardt, PhD, MPH is the Director of the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM) at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. NCHM is one of the newest national Centers at the CDC with a staff of approximately 250 and a combined annual budget of more than $100 million. The center specializes in marketing and communication programs that are high-impact, science-based, and customer-centered, such as the CDC’s Emergency Communication System, digital television production studios, and the publication of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Before joining the CDC in August 2005, Dr. Bernhardt was an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and the Founding Director of the Center for Public Health Communication. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Health Promotion and Behavior at the University of Georgia. His research and instruction have focused on health communication, marketing, and media, with an emphasis on information technology and e-health.

Cindy Brach, MPP
Health Services Research and Health Literacy

Cindy Brach, MPP is a Senior Health Policy Researcher at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Cindy is AHRQ’s lead on cultural competence and sits on a number of cultural competence advisory groups. In addition to her own cultural competence research, she has overseen the development of guides to assist health plans in implementing culturally and linguistically appropriate services and a research agenda for cultural competence in health care. Currently Cindy is spearheading AHRQ’s health literacy activities, coordinating AHRQ’s work in developing measures and improving the evidence base, and integrating health literacy activities throughout AHRQ’s portfolios. Her publications on cultural and linguistic competence include, “Crossing the Language Chasm,” and “Can Cultural Competency Reduce Ethnic and Racial Health Disparities? A Review and Conceptual Model.”

Since 1999 Cindy has managed the Child Health Insurance Research Initiative (CHIRI™), a set of nine research projects on public child health insurance programs co-funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Health Resources and Services Administration. Cindy oversaw the development of CHIRI™ Dissemination Partnerships, co-authors CHIRI™ Issue Briefs, and makes policy presentations. Her other child health related activities include serving on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Medicaid-SCHIP Quality Work Group and the Medicaid Care Management Knowledge Transfer Team. Immediately before coming to AHRQ, Cindy was the Associate Director for Research and Analysis at the Mental Health Policy Resource Center, where she directed mental health and health policy research projects with a focus on managed care. Her earlier health and human services experience includes serving as a welfare reform consultant and provider of technical assistance, a State-level administrator, and a municipal policy analyst. Cindy received her Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was also advanced to Ph.D. candidacy.

Terry C. Davis, PhD
Louisiana’s Statewide Health Literacy Initiative
A State Government Approach to Low Health Literacy

A pioneer in the field of health literacy, Terry C. Davis, Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, L.A., where she also heads the Behavioral Science Unit of the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center. Among her faculty responsibilities, Dr. Davis directs the Doctor/Patient Communication course for medical students and Internal Medicine residents. For the past 20 years, she has led an interdisciplinary team investigating the impact of patient literacy on health and healthcare.

Dr. Davis was awarded the Louisiana Public Health Association’s Founders Award for Significant Achievement in Public Health Research. In 2003, she was asked to chair Louisiana’s statewide Health Literacy Task Force, the first legislatively mandated health literacy group in the nation.

Dr. Davis, who holds her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Fielding Institute, has published more than seventy articles and book chapters related to health literacy, health communication and preventive medicine. Patient and provider education products developed by Dr. Davis and her team are being distributed by HRSA, the America Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Current research projects funded by the American College of Physicians Foundation include working with investigators at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at San Francisco to develop a diabetes self management toolkit for patients with limited literacy.

Active in health literacy on the national level, Dr. Davis has served on the National Cancer Institute’s Work Group on Cancer and Literacy, the Health Literacy Advisory Board for the American Medical Association Foundation, and as an independent agent of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Health Literacy. Currently she is chair of the American College of Physicians Foundation’s Patient–Centered Health Literacy Advisory Board, serves on the master faculty of the AMA’s Train-the-Trainer Health Literacy Curriculum, and as a member of the Healthy People 2010, Health Literacy/Health Communication Section.

Darren A. DeWalt, MD
Patient Literacy and Chronic Disease Management

Darren A. DeWalt, M.D., M.P.H is assistant professor in the division of general internal medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is board-certified in pediatrics and in internal medicine.

Dr. DeWalt actively researches interventions for low-literacy patients with congestive heart failure and diabetes. He also recently received the Pfizer Health Literacy Scholar Award to investigate mediators of the relationship between literacy and health outcomes. Dr. DeWalt is also a member of the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center scientific team which performed a systematic review of the impact of literacy on health outcomes for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He is currently a member of the Health Literacy Advisory Board for the American College of Physicians Foundation.

Dr. DeWalt is a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed his residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he also served as chief resident in internal medicine. He received his medical degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s of science degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Harold J. Fallon, MD, MACP
Introductions and Opening Remarks

Harold J. Fallon, MD, MACP is Home Secretary of the Institute of Medicine. Prior to this he served as Dean of the University of Alabama School of Medicine and Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education. His major clinical and clinical research interests have been in liver diseases. He helped to found liver sections at the University of North Carolina and the Medical College of Virginia and supported the development of the Liver Center at the University of Alabama. He graduated from Yale Medical School in 1957 and was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He was a Clinical Associate at the National Cancer Institute of the NIH 1959-1961 and thereafter was chief resident at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Fallon has been a member of numerous academic societies, especially in Internal Medicine and Hepatology. He is past President of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation, Vice President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, President of the American Association of Physicians, Chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine, Chairman of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians, Chairman of the Residency Review Committee in Internal Medicine, and President of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease. He has served on the Governing Board of the American Gastroenterology Association and on the Editorial Boards of Hepatology, Gastroenterology, The Journal of Clinical Investigation and Lipids. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1989. He was a member of the Membership Committee and its Chairman from 1995 through 1998.

Andrea Gelzer, MD, MS, FACP
The Business Case and Insurance Reform: Financing Health Literacy

Andrea Gelzer, MD, MS, FACP is Senior Vice President for Clinical Public Affairs at CIGNA Healthcare. Her responsibilities include strategic guidance and the development of public policy, and to articulate the company's initiatives to improve health outcomes, assure patient safety, and provide integrated patient-centered health benefits. Prior to joining CIGNA Healthcare, Gelzer practiced Internal Medicine and founded a 32-member physician organization in southern Michigan. She has also previously introduced two hospitalist programs. Dr. Gelzer completed her undergraduate work at Tufts University and medical school at St. George's University. She received an MS degree in Administrative Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dr. Gelzer currently serves on the March of Dimes' national Public Policy Advisory Council and is a liaison member of CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. She is also a member of the state of Connecticut's Quality in Health Care Advisory Committee, America's Health Insurance Plans' Chief Medical Officer Leadership and Policy Committees, and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business Health Care Sector Advisory Council. She has previously served on the State of Connecticut's Office of Health Care Access Advisory Council and on the Albert Schweitzer Institute's Board of Directors.

Lydia P. Jackson
A State Government Approach to Low Health Literacy

Lydia P. Jackson is a Louisiana State Senator for District 39 which serves the Shreveport area. Prior to her election in 2003, Ms. Jackson served as a Louisiana State Representative. Ms. Jackson is currently a member of the State Senate Judiciary Committee where she serves as Vice-Chair, the State Senate Committees on Finance, Health & Welfare, and Local & Municipal Affairs. She is also Vice-Chair of the State Senate Select Committee on Women & Children. Additionally, Ms. Jackson is the Community Outreach Director for Hibernia National Bank. She works primarily in the bank's North Louisiana Region, which includes markets in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Tallulah and Lake Providence. As community outreach director, she is responsible for initiating partnerships with community-based organizations, government agencies and other groups to facilitate opportunities for expansion of bank products and services and the production and rehabilitation of affordable housing. Lydia Jackson is a graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe University.

Linda Johnston Lloyd, MEd
Using Health Literacy in Serving Vulnerable Populations

Linda Johnston Lloyd, Senior Advisor for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Center for Quality received her undergraduate degree from Slippery Rock University and her MEd from The Pennsylvania State University.

Linda is Chair of the HRSA Health Literacy Work Group and a member of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Literacy Work Group. She has made numerous presentations on Health Literacy and the Quality of Health Care. Linda’s most recent work focuses on health literacy and the chronic care model. She recently presented a paper on this topic at the International Conference on Healthcare Communication.

She represents HRSA on the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization’s Health Literacy and Patient Safety Roundtable Meetings and on the Institute of Medicine Health Literacy Roundtable Project. Linda is a member of the Expert Review Panel for the American College of Physicians Foundation Prescription Bottle Labeling Research Project.

Prior to joining the Federal Government, Ms. Johnston Lloyd was a Professor of Health Science at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD where she continues to teach a course, Health Care in the US, as adjunct faculty. Linda is an elected member of the American Association for Health Education’s Board of Directors and Chair of the Howard County, MD School Health Council.

Linda is the recipient of four HRSA Administrator’s Citations, the HHS Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service and the International Community College Teaching Excellence Award, The National Institute For Staff And Organizational Development, The University of Texas at Austin.

Lloyd J. Kolbe, PhD
A Federal Approach to Health Literacy in K-12 Public Schools
Public Education and Awareness

Lloyd J. Kolbe, PhD, has held appointments in academic, private-sector, and federal agencies. He currently serves as professor of applied health science at Indiana University where he is developing health policy and systems research to improve school and adolescent health programs. He has written more than 120 publications and has served as: Associate Director of the University of Texas Center for Health Promotion Research; President of the American School Health Association; Vice President of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education; Visiting Professor at Beijing Medical University; Lead for Health Promotion within the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation; Chairman of the World Health Organization Expert Committee on School Health Programs; Member of the U.S. Senior Biomedical Research Service; Vice-Chair of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Adolescent Health and Development; and founding Director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

With colleagues at CDC, he established ongoing research and development systems to help our nation's schools prevent serious health problems (e.g., HIV infection, chronic diseases, and adverse effects of terrorism); established the National Initiative to Improve Adolescent Health by the Year 2010; and helped improve adolescent and school health programs in 23 other nations. For his work to improve child and adolescent health, Dr. Kolbe has received the highest awards given by the U.S. Public Health Service; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and the International Union for Health Promotion and Education.

Charles LaRue, MA
Culture-Specific Health Literacy Technology

Charles LaRue, MA, has a Masters Degree in English as a Second Language (ESL), and has been teaching and developing ESL materials for adults for over 25 years. During his tenure, he has gained a reputation as an innovator using computer technology to create materials for recent immigrants that are comprehensible and engaging. In 2001 Charles was honored as Minnesota ABE Teacher of the Year.

He has written six multi-lingual health education booklets. In collaboration with the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance he wrote two environmental education textbooks which also focus on related health issues. He develops several online activities for ESL students. Last year he completed exercises on reading medicine labels and warnings. He recently finished a project on diabetes, hypertension and nutritional information. Available free online at www.mcedservices.com, Mr. Larue’s educational programs have already been used by thousands of learners.

Alan R. Nelson, MD, MACP
Plenary Session Moderator

Alan R. Nelson, MD, MACP serves as Chair of the ACP Foundation. Dr. Nelson is an internist-endocrinologist who was in private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah until becoming chief executive officer of the American Society of Internal Medicine (ASIM) in 1992. Dr. Nelson currently serves as Special Advisor to the EVP/CEO of the organization, which was renamed ACP in April 2003. Dr. Nelson attended Utah State University, and received his MD from Northwestern University. He was president of the American Medical Association in 1989-90, after serving as chair of the AMA Board of Trustees and was president of the World Medical Association from 1991-1992. Early in his career, he was president of the Utah Society of Internal Medicine and the Utah Medical Association.

Dr. Nelson was appointed to the influential Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) in May, 2000. MedPAC advises the Congress on a wide range of Medicare policy issues. A member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (IOM), he serves on the IOM Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences Research and Medicine, and was co-chair of the Workshop Planning Group on the Environment and Cancer. He also was Chair of an IOM committee on Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Health Care and is a co-editor of the study report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.

Among awards and honors that Dr. Nelson has received are Distinguished Internist of the American Society of Internal Medicine, Mastership in the American College of Physicians, the Coble Award of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, Distinguished Alumnus of Northwestern University School of Medicine, the Perry A. Lambird Excellence in Medicine Award, and the Boyle Award for Distinguished Public Service from ACP-ASIM.

Ruth Parker, MD, FACP
Health Literacy Advocacy

Ruth Parker, MD, FACP is a Professor of Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine as well an Associate Director of the Faculty Development program. She holds a secondary appointment at the Emory University School of Public Health in the Division of Epidemiology.

Over the last 10 years, Dr. Parker has focused extensively on healthcare issues of underserved populations, particularly health literacy. She was a principal investigator in the Robert Wood Johnson Literacy in Health Study and helped create a measurement tool to quantify patients' ability to read and understand health information. She has authored numerous papers on health literacy, and co-edited the complete bibliography of medicine on health literacy for the National Library of Medicine.

Dr. Parker was instrumental in establishing the ACP Foundation's focus on health literacy and served as the first chair of the Foundation's Patient-Centered Health Litreracy Advisory Board. She currently chairs the ACP Foundation's Programs Committee and is a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Literacy. She chaired the expert panel for the Council of Scientific Affairs for the AMA that authored the frequently-cited JAMA white paper on health literacy. She is currently chair of the steering committee for the AMA Foundation's national signature program on health literacy.

Dr. Parker attended Davidson College and received her medical training at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She completed her residency and chief residency at the Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, and her fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds Board Certification in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

Yolanda Partida, MSW, DPA
Developing Symbols for Health Care

Yolanda Partida, MSW, DPA is National Program Office Director for Hablamos Juntos: Improving Patient-Provider Communication for Latinos, an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to improve access to quality health care for Latinos with limited English proficiency (LEP). Hablamos Juntos (We Speak Together) is working with 10 demonstration sites around the country to develop affordable ways health providers can offer language services. Grantees are implementing seven program requirements in three benchmark areas: 1) Increasing the availability and quality of interpreter services; 2) Developing useful health related materials in Spanish; and, 3) Supporting the development of symbols-based signage to help patients find their way around health care facilities. Dr. Partida has extensive experience in public teaching and private hospital administration, as well as public health administration and public policy. She has consulted on health policy and management, implemented cross-border public health strategies in the most populated US-Mexico border region, and helped launched Healthy San Diego, a multi-health plan managed care program for Medicaid patients. Dr. Partida received her DPA from the University of Southern California, School of Policy, Planning and Development.

Michael Pignone, MD, MPH
Patient Literacy and Chronic Disease Management

Michael Pignone, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UNC - Chapel Hill School of Medicine, 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.

Kyu Rhee, MD, MPH
Using Health Literacy in Serving Vulnerable Populations

Kyu Rhee, MD, MPH serves as a primary care physician and Medical Director at Upper Cardozo Community Health Center in Washington, DC, a position he has held since December 2002. He is board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and he is an active member of the National Health Service Corps. As medical director of the largest community health center serving the underserved in Washington, DC, he manages and leads a staff of over 30 full and part-time clinicians.

Prior to coming to Washington, DC, Kyu did his residency and served as a Chief Resident in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. His medical school training occurred at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Dr. Rhee also finished a Masters degree in Public Policy with a concentration in Health Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Dr. Rhee’s undergraduate education was at Yale University where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Science in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and also served as President of the student body.

Delia Rochon
Health Literacy Interventions to Increase Access and Reduce Costs
Community Health Outreach Programs for Vulnerable Populations

Delia Rochon was born in Uruguay, where she received a B.S. in Human Science, an M.S. in Psychology, and post-graduate studies in adult education, and community programs development. She has 28 years of hands-on experience as a community organizer, trainer, facilitator, and community-based program designer. Before coming to Utah, she traveled extensively, studying and implementing community programs in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America.

Delia is currently the director of Healthy Communities at Intermountain Health Care (IHC). She researches new ways to improve the overall health of local communities, and develops strategies to reach healthier status. For the last two years, health literacy has been a main focus of action for IHC Healthy Communities. Delia works closely with community clinics that serve populations vulnerable to health literacy issues.

As a current member of the Ouelessebougou-Utah Alliance, Delia is involved in the organization and training of health councils in the villages of Mali, Africa. She led the 2005 expedition to introduce the concepts and principles of building capacities among villagers and health providers.

Delia chaired the Relief Society General Welfare Committee of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints, from 1997 to 2002. The Relief Society is a women’s organization of more than four million members around the world, dedicated to provide relief and humanitarian assistance to those in need. In that capacity, Delia developed long-term strategic plans promoting health and sanitation, literacy, and self-reliance among diverse communities throughout the world, in partnership with local leaders.

While working at the University of Utah, she received the Center for Disease Control award “Rookie of the Year” (1995) and “Bridges of Hope” (1996).

She was the recipient of the International Training and Community Services scholarship, awarded by the United Nations (1983).

Debra L. Roter, DrPH
Physician-Patient Communication in Vulnerable Populations

Dr. Debra Roter is Professor of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and holds appointments of Professor in the Schools of Medicine and Nursing. Dr. Roter received her Doctorate from Johns Hopkins in l977 and has been on faculty since 1979.

Dr. Roter has been recognized by the Web of Science as among the 250 most highly cited social scientists of the past 20 years. She is the recipient of several award, including the Society for Public Health Education’s Beryl Roberts Award in recognition of outstanding contribution to Health Education Research, the American Academy on Physician and Patient Award for Outstanding Research Contributing to the Theory, Practice and Teaching of Effective Health Care Communication, and the Johns Hopkins Golden Apple Award for recognition of excellence in teaching.

Dr. Roter's primary research focus is in the study of physician-patient communication. She has developed a method of process analysis applied to audio or video recordings of medical encounters which has been widely adopted by researchers, both nationally and internationally. Her studies include basic social psychology research regarding the social determinants and consequences of communication dynamics and interpersonal influence, as well as health education and health services research. Her research includes clinical investigation of patient and physician interventions to improve the quality of communication and enhance its positive effects on patient health outcomes, and educational applications in the training and evaluation of teaching strategies to enhance physicians' communication skills. She has authored over 150 articles and two books on the subject of doctor-patient communication and recently co-edited a book on health literacy.

Dr. Roter is currently Principal Investigator of a large study of genetic counseling process and is Co- Principal Investigator on two randomized clinical trials that test physician training interventions for communication skills in adult primary care and pediatric practice.

Fatema Salam, MPH
Prescription Medication Compliance and Low Health Literacy

Fatema Salam, MPH is the Program Director at the National Quality Forum. Ms. Salam manages projects involving improving safety through informed consent for patients with limited literacy, improving the use of prescription medication, and improving healthcare quality for minority patients.

Previously, Ms. Salam worked as the Senior Program Manager at the Academy for Educational Development. During this four year tenure, Ms. Salam managed many initiatives and projects including the largest domestic privately-funded anti-HIV/AIDS stigma initiative for the Ford Foundation. Ms. Salam holds a MPH. in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.

Barbara L. Schuster, MD, MACP
Health Literacy Curricula in Professional Education
Educating Health Professionals

Barbara L. Schuster, MD, MACP, is the Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Wright State University School of Medicine. Prior to this she served as the Project Director of the Primary Care Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. Dr. Schuster received her undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and her MD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine.

She is an active member of the Society of General Internal Medicine, the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine, and the Association of Professors of Medicine. She currently chairs the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine Task Force on Financing Medical Education. For the American College of Physicians, she has been on the Board of Regents since 1999 and chairs the Education Committee. Dr. Schuster’s contributions to internal medicine were recognized in 1996 with the distinction as Master of the American College of Physicians.

Joanne Schwartzberg, MD
Physician-Patient Communication in Vulnerable Populations

Joanne Schwartzberg, MD, is Director of Aging and Community Health at the American Medical Association and Senior Science Advisor on Health Literacy at the American Medical Association Foundation. She received her B.A. from Harvard and M.D. from Northwestern and is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. Dr. Schwartzberg is a past-president of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, the Illinois Geriatrics Society, and the American Academy of Home Care Physicians.

In 1988 she received the Physician of the Year Award from the National Association for Home Care. In 1992 she received the Physician of the Year Award from the American Academy of Home Care Physicians. In 1995 she served as co-chair of the Illinois Delegation to the White House Conference on Aging, Caucus on Health and Social Services. She also serves as AMA liason to the National Patient Safety Foundation's Partnership for Safe Medication Use – Educating and Empowering the Health Consumer.

Paul G. Shekelle, MD, PhD
Advisory Group for Prescription Bottle Labeling Project

Paul G. Shekelle, MD, PhD is a consultant in health sciences at RAND, Professor of Medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine, and a staff physician at the VA Medical Center in West Los Angeles. His research focus has been in the application of innovative methods to the assessment and improvement of the quality of care. He spent 6 years as a Career Development Awardee of the VA Health Services Research and Development Service. Dr. Shekelle spent 1996-1997 in the United Kingdom as an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy studying how quality of care was being assessed in the National Health Service. Since 1997, Dr. Shekelle has been the Director of the Southern California Evidence-Based Practice Center, and has led numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses in that capacity. Dr. Shekelle also co-directs the Assessing Care of the Vulnerable Elderly project, which seeks to develop a comprehensive set of quality tools to assess care for this population. Dr. Shekelle received is medical degree from Duke University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health in 1993.

William H. Shrank, MD, MSHS
Update on Prescription Bottle Labeling Project
Improving Prescription Bottle Labels
Advisory Group for Prescription Bottle Labeling

Project William H. Shrank, MD, MSHS, is an Instructor at the Harvard University School of Medicine and is an Instructor in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Shrank received his bachelors degree from Brown University in 1993, his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1998 and completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. Dr. Shrank served on the clinical faculty at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in the Division of General Internal Medicine in 2001-2. In 2005, he completed a Health Services Research and Development fellowship at UCLA and the West Los Angeles VA Hospital and earned his Masters degree in health services in 2004 from UCLA.

Dr. Shrank’s research focuses on improving prescription drug care. He has led projects aimed at better understanding how market forces impact adherence to prescription drugs, how pharmacy benefit design impacts prescription drug care, and whether doctors and patients communicate about costs of prescription drugs. He has also been active in measuring the quality of prescription drug care in the United States. He is currently serving as co-Principal Investigator of the American College of Physicians Foundation’s on-going Prescription Bottle Labeling Research Project.

Susanne A. Stoiber, MPA, MSc
Greetings from the Institute of Medicine

Susanne A. Stoiber, M.P.A., M.Sc. has served since 1975 in a series of senior positions in the National Academies and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She was named Executive Director (Chief Operating Officer) of the Institute of Medicine in 1998. Her responsibilities include management of the IOM program operations, and support of the Institute’s governance and membership functions. In this period, the Institute has doubled its’ program size, and become a major national presence in areas such as the quality of health care in America, the affordability and safety of vaccines, health disparities and food safety.

In the Department of Health and Human Services, Mrs. Stoiber held a number of senior positions in the Office of the Secretary and at the National Institutes of Health. She was three times appointed as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health – Planning and Evaluation (1979 and 1995); Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (1996); and as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Program Systems (1997). In these positions, she managed analytical, research and evaluation activities. Accomplishments included: coordination of Healthy People 2010 – the nation’s prevention agenda; oversight of the Department’s evaluation program and GPRA-related strategic planning. While at the National Institutes of Health in the 1980s, she served as hospital administrator of the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Research Center and as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Director for Science of the NIH.

She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Public Administration degrees from the University of Colorado, and a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics. Honors and recognition include the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award (1979, 1981, 1997); the NIH Director’s Award (1985), and a Presidential Rank Award for lifetime achievement in the Senior Executive Service (1998).

Herbert M. Swick, MD
Cultural Competence Curriculum in Professional Education

Herbert M. Swick, MD is the Executive Director of the Institute of Medicine and Humanities (IMH), a joint program of Saint Patrick Hospital and Health Sciences Center at The University of Montana in Missoula. He is a professor at The University of Montana, where he teaches in the Davidson Honors College. He is also Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Dr. Swick earned his MD degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, then completed training in pediatrics and in child neurology. He is board certified in both pediatrics and neurology. He spent thirty years in academic medicine, holding faculty and administrative appointments at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Kansas School of Medicine. He was Associate Dean for Medical Education and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Wisconsin, and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Dean at Kansas. Immediately before joining the Institute of Medicine and Humanities, he was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), where his research focused on medical professionalism.

In 1978, Dr. Swick was named a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, during the time when that university was founding its medical school. During his year in Australia, he devoted his efforts to the new curriculum, faculty development and teaching the inaugural class of students.

Dr. Swick has authored over a hundred articles and abstracts in peer-reviewed professional journals, and he has given numerous presentations at national and international meetings, related both to his specialty of child neurology and to his work in the medical humanities. In addition, he hosts Collegium Medicum, a weekly radio broadcast heard on Montana Public Radio.

His interests include:
(1) the nexus between medicine and the humanities, particularly literature and music. He teaches honors courses on physician-writers, on the art of vision, and on plagues. For several years, he has presented Music and Medicine at the annual AAMC meetings.
(2) professionalism and professional values in medical education and practice.

Wes Thompson, MBA
Community Health Outreach Programs for Vulnerable Populations

Wes Thompson, MBA, is Vice President of Intermountain Health Care (IHC) Community Health Partnerships, which works to improve the health of under-served populations. The department addresses the unmet health care needs of the medically under-served with a focus on access to primary care, women/newborn health and children’s health. The department also promotes IHC’s charitable mission with respect for human dignity and empowerment of communities and individuals. Mr. Thompson also serves as president of the IHC Foundation. He works with a board of community volunteers to provide funding to community agencies who serve the health care needs of cities throughout the state of Utah. Mr. Thompson also assists IHC employees in finding opportunities to volunteer in a variety of settings and coordinates IHC’s charitable donations.

Mr. Thompson received his B.A from the University of Utah in 1973 and MBA from the same University in 1977.

Terri Tye
Health Literacy and Patient Safety in Public Policy

Terri Tye is the Director of Public Affairs at the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). In this role, she directs the Joint Commission’s Public Policy Initiative, an initiative launched in 2001 to address important issues affecting the health care industry. The Joint Commission works closely with health care stakeholder groups, legislators and government agencies to see solutions to major health care issues through to their fruition. Ms. Tye also authors the Joint Commission’s Health Care at the Crossroads series of white paper reports that emanate from this initiative. To date, the Joint Commission has released Health Care at the Crossroads reports addressing the nursing shortage, emergency preparedness, organ donation and transplantation, and medical liability.

Ms. Tye has 17 years’ experience in the health care industry working in a variety of senior communications and marketing roles. Prior to her rejoining the Joint Commission, she was a senior communications leader for an international health care information technology company. Ms. Tye holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri – Columbia.