Health literacy is critical to ensuring people can make informed health decisions and is dependent on healthcare professionals' abilities to empower patients to succeed. The Center for Health Literacy Research + Practice will partner across health systems and communities to develop sustainable, cost-effective and practical interventions that improve health outcomes by increasing health literacy.
The Center's Director Michael Paasche-Orlow, MD, MPH is an international leader in health-related communication and health literacy, founder and director of the leading Health Literacy Annual Research Conference and founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Health Literacy Research & Practice. "Ultimately our goals are patient empowerment, professional proficiency and transformation of institutional and societal practices that disadvantage those with limited health literacy and perpetuate health disparities," says Dr. Paasche-Orlow. "Healthcare and public health are too complicated. Join us in the work of helping to make easier."
The Center's effort to cultivate health literacy curricular programming for Tufts Medicine and participating Tufts University schools and community partners is being led by Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, M.Ed. Investigators with the Center include Dr. Andreas Klein, Dr. Lisa Quintiliani, and Dr. Nicole Holland. The Center also hosts the Health Literacy Toolshed, an online database of health literacy measures for researchers and the annual research meeting HARC. Current funders include: NIA, NCI, NLM, NIMHD, NIDCR, NHLBI, NIDA and NINR.
