Mary Ann Abrams, M.D., M.P.H., is in Clinical Performance Improvement at Iowa Health System (IHS), where she leads their health literacy efforts, and serves as faculty for Blank Children’s Hospital Pediatric Residency Education Program in quality and community pediatrics. Dr. Abrams is co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Health Literacy Project Advisory Committee, and served on the AMA Health Literacy and Patient Safety Work Group. She is the Medical Director and Coalition Leader for Reach Out and Read (ROR)–Iowa. Dr. Abrams serves as the Iowa AAP Chapter ’s Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) Facilitator, and on the Iowa Medical Society Public Health Committee. She graduated from the University of Dayton, and received her medical degree from the Ohio State University College of Medicine, and her Master of Public Health from the Harvard University School of Public Health. She is board-certified in pediatrics and preventive medicine, and has extensive experience in both the clinical and public health arenas.
Ellen Beck, M.D., is Director of Community Education for the Division of Family Medicine of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She received her medical degree in 1976 from McGill University and completed a residency in family medicine. After serving as Director of the undergraduate program in Family Medicine at McGill University for two years, she joined the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at UCSD as Predoctoral Director in 1988. With the help of UCSD medical students and several
community partners, Dr. Beck co-founded three UCSD Student-Run Free Clinics in the San Diego community. These clinics provide free, quality medical, dental and social services to homeless and indigent people in Pacific Beach, Downtown and the Mountain View areas of San Diego. Her elective course “Community Advocacy” is one of the most popular courses offered to first year medical students through the School of Medicine. Dr. Beck also created a faculty development program, “Addressing the Health Needs of the Underserved,” which is offered to physicians from all over the country. This program is designed to provide administrative, scholarly and teaching skills needed to develop and implement programs in primary care for the underserved. Sixty-six faculty members from 25 states have completed the program. In addition, she created a full-time 1 year Fellowship in Underserved Medicine at UCSD. She was appointed to the Healthy Families Advisory Panel in Sacramento, and is actively working on creating a collaborative Underserved Services Network for San Diego. Dr. Beck sees her work as “creating environments where individuals, families and communities take charge of their lives and achieve joy and wellbeing.”Someday, she would like to have an impact on public education in this country, so that both schools and universities become centers that inspire creativity, wonder, a commitment to social justice, and a love of learning.
Arthur Culbert, Ph.D., is President and CEO of Health Literacy Missouri. Prior to being named President and CEO, Dr. Culbert served as Interim Executive Director of Health Literacy Missouri (HLM) and, since 2007, as the Senior Advisor to the Missouri Foundation for Health. In that role, he chaired the Missouri Health Literacy Enhancement Coordinating Council and facilitated the development of HLM, a statewide health literacy center. He has also been a leading force in building a national coalition of state health literacy initiatives and was recently selected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Health Literacy. Dr. Culbert spent 31 years as a faculty member and a dean at the Boston University schools of medicine and public health. He has more than 25 years of teaching experience in the fields of public health, medical sociology, and medical education. He has served as the National Chair for the Group on Student Affairs at the Association of American Medical Colleges. In the 1980s, he designed, developed and implemented the Early Medical School Selection Program. In the early 1990s, he authored Profile M.D., an electronic career advising program used by hundreds of medical students in medical schools throughout the country. Dr. Culbert writes a monthly guest column on health care for the St. Louis Business Journal, and has written several published articles regarding health literacy issues since 2007.
Terry C. Davis, Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, Louisian. For the past 25 years, she has led an interdisciplinary team investigating the impact of patient literacy on health and healthcare. Seminal achievements include development of the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine, the most widely used literacy test in healthcare settings, and development of user-friendly patient education and provider training materials. Terry has authored more than 100 publications related to health literacy, health communication, and preventive medicine. She has served on Health Literacy Advisory Boards for both the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians Foundation (ACP-F). Terry was an independent agent on the IOM Committee on Health Literacy and a developer of the AMA’s Train-the-Trainer Health Literacy Curriculum. She is currently a member of the Healthy People 2010 Health Literacy/ Health Communication Section and the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. Terry is the Principal Investigator (PI) on a 5-year NCI-funded grant to increase regular breast and CRC screening among patients with low literacy. She is also the PI on a national team that has developed and tested practical self-management diabetes and COPD guides and videos, which the ACP-F has distributed to more than a million patients. The team is working on a coronary artery disease guide. Currently, she is a co-investigator on a CDC-funded project to teach vaccine safety through the Academic Pediatric Association’s online curriculum for residents and practicing physicians. Previously, she was a PI on several childhood immunization and newborn screening patient and provider education research projects funded by HRSA.
Darren A. DeWalt, M.D., M.P.H., is Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Dr. DeWalt actively researches self-management interventions for patients with low literacy and focuses on chronic diseases like diabetes, heart failure, and asthma. His focus is on patient-physician communication and health system design to achieve better outcomes for vulnerable populations. He is the principal investigator at the UNC research site for the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) and chair of the Pediatrics Workgroup. Dr. DeWalt is a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UNC. He completed his residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at UNC where he also served as chief resident in internal medicine. He received his medical degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. DeWalt led the design team and is currently a national improvement advisor for the Improving Performance in Practice (IPIP)
program for the boards and specialty societies of internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics.
Jonathan Fielding, M.D., M.P.H., M.A., M.B.A., is a Professor of Health Services and Pediatrics and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities. Dr. Fielding serves as Director of Public Health and Health Officer for Los Angeles County where he is responsible for the full range of public health activities for 10 million county residents. Dr. Fielding teaches Determinants of Health and participates as faculty lecturer in several of the Department courses. He received both his M.D., M.A. (History of Science), and M.P.H. from Harvard University, and his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business Administration. His areas of expertise include the development of clinical preventive services guidelines, prevention economics and financing, and health promotion for children, adults and families in community, clinical and occupational settings. As the founding Co-Director of the Center for Health Enhancement, Education and Research, he provided the first comprehensive university-based center to focus on clinical and worksite prevention opportunities. He formerly served as the Founding Board Member, Chairman of the Board and member of the Executive Committee of The California Wellness Foundation, the largest U.S. Foundation devoted to disease prevention and health promotion, and is among the 50 largest U.S. Foundations. Further, he was a founding member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and is Vice-Chair, Community Preventive Services Task Force. He is immediate past President of the American College of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Fielding’s awards include the Porter Prize, given for his national impact on improving the lives of Americans; and membership in the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. He is the author of more than 150 original scientific articles and chapters, Editor of Annual Review of Public Health, and Associate Editor of the textbook Public Health and Preventive Medicine.
Ariella Herman, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer of Operations and Decision Sciences at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. She is the Research Director of the Johnson & Johnson Head Start Programs and is the founder of the UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Health Care Institute. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, Dr. Herman was a tenured Associate Professor in the Management Science Department at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce de Paris (ESCP), France. Her research and consulting have been in the areas of child care and health care management systems. In the last 10 years her main focus has been on low income population and developing low literacy health education programs. Through the Health Care Institute, her research has shown that the healthcare system could
save millions of dollars annually in direct costs associated with unnecessary emergency room and doctor/clinic visits. She is a key contributor to several programs conducted by the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA Anderson and serves as an instructor in the Head Start-Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program, as well as several UCLA Anderson Executive Education courses. Ms. Herman has received several awards for outstanding teaching, including the Citibank teaching award in 1995. She was recognized with the Head Start-Johnson & Johnson Exceptional Teaching Award and the Health Literacy Award for the “most innovative health education and promotion rogram” in 2009. Most recently, Dr. Herman was awarded the first annual Health Literacy Innovation Champions Award by Health Literacy Innovations, for her work in the Health Care Institute. Dr. Herman, who is fluent in Hebrew, French, Italian, Romanian, German, Spanish, and English, earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Paris, a master ’s in engineering from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in management from the University of Paris. Most recently, her research with the Health Care Institute has been published in the Journal of Community Health, Journal of Emergency Medicine, and has been featured in several high-profile news publications.
George Isham, M.D., M.S., is Medical Director and Chief Health Officer for HealthPartners. He is responsible for quality and utilization management, chairs the Benefits Committee, and leads Partners for Better Health, a program and strategy for improving member health. Before his current position, Dr. Isham was medical director of MedCenters Health Plan in Minneapolis. In the late 1980s, he was executive director of University Health Care, an organization affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Isham received his Master of Science in preventive medicine/administrative medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Illinois. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison. His experience as a primary care physician included 8 years at the Freeport Clinic in Freeport, Illinois, and 3 years as clinical assistant professor in medicine at the University of Wisconsin. HealthPartners is a consumer-governed Minnesota health plan that formed through the 1992 affiliation of Group Health, Inc., and MedCenters Health Plan. HealthPartners is a large managed health care organization in Minnesota, representing nearly 800,000 members. Group Health, founded in 1957, is a network of staff medical and dental centers located throughout the Twin Cities. MedCenters, founded in 1972, is a network of contracted physicians serving members through affiliated medical and dental centers.
Carol M. Mangione, M.D., M.S.P.H., is the Barbara A. Levey, M.D. & Gerald S. Levey, M.D. Endowed Chair and Professor of Medicine and Health Services at UCLA. Dr. Mangione is the Director of the NIH/ NIA funded UCLA/Drew Resource Center for Minority Aging Research/ Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly (RCMAR III/ CHIME II), and Co-director of the UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. In both of these programs she mentors and trains physicians developing research careers. Dr. Mangione is the principal investigator for the Translational Research Centers for Diabetes Within Managed-Care Settings (TRIAD) Legacy study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to study the quality of care for persons with diabetes where her work has focused on the relationship between organization of care, cost sharing, control of cardiovascular risk factors and process outcomes such as adherence to medications. She was also recently awarded funding from CDC and NIDDK to conduct the “Diabetes Health Plan: A System Level Intervention to Prevent and Treat Diabetes,” and was appointed to be the National Chairperson for the multi-site National Program entitled “Natural Experiments and Effectiveness Studies for Diabetes Prevention and Control.” Dr. Mangione is also principal investigator of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Virtual Lab for California Project. The purpose of this project is to create a coalition of government, academic, and private entities within the state of California to provide access to a diverse set of existing data to answer research questions relating to the health of women and minorities across the life span. Currently, Dr. Mangione serves as co-investigator of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute funded project entitled Comparative Effectiveness and Outcomes Improvement (CEOI). This project is a statewide effort that aims to develop sustainable statewide infrastructure for Comparative Effectiveness Research on primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease among managed care populations. Dr. Mangione received her B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, her M.D. degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and her M.S.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston.
Alfred E. Osborne, Jr., Ph.D., M.B.A., M.A., is Senior Associate Dean of UCLA Anderson. In this role, he oversees a variety of key areas and initiatives within the school, including development, alumni relations, career and corporate initiatives, career management, marketing and communications and executive education. Dr. Osborne is also professor of Global Economics & Management and founder and faculty director of the Harold Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA. The Price Center serves to organize all faculty research and student activities and curricula related
to the study of entrepreneurship and new business development at UCLA Anderson. A corporate governance expert, Dr. Osborne formed a Director Education and Certification Program designed to help officers and directors of private firms prepare for the higher level of scrutiny that comes when they take their companies public. This program also educates directors and officers regarding SEC regulations, FASB considerations, NASDAQ rules and the current best practices in corporate governance. Dr. Osborne currently serves as a director of Kaiser Aluminum and the Heckmann Corporation, and has served many years on the corporate boards of Times Mirror Company, US Filter Corporation, Greyhound Lines, Inc., First Interstate Bank of California, Nordstrom, Inc. and K2, Inc., among others. He has served as an economic fellow at the Brookings Institution and directed studies at the SEC that contributed to changes in Rule 144, Regulation D, and other exemptive requirements to the securities laws designed to lower costs and improve liquidity and capital market access to venture capitalists and emerging growth firms alike. Dr. Osborne’s current research interests include venture capital and private equity, and the role of the board of directors in private and public corporations. He remains active in the entrepreneurial and venture development community, has served on the editorial boards of several journals, and consults with growing companies and nonprofit organizations on business and economic matters.
Rima Rudd, Sc.D., M.S.P.H., is Senior Lecturer on Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her work centers on health communication and the design and evaluation of public health programs. She teaches courses on innovative strategies in health education, program planning and evaluation, health literacy, and theory. Dr. Rudd is focusing her research inquiries on literacy related disparities and literacy related barriers to health programs, services, and care. She works closely with the adult education, public health, oral health, and medical sectors and with several national literacy initiatives in Canada, England, and Europe. Dr. Rudd wrote several reports that are helping shape the agenda in health literacy research and practice. They include the health literacy chapter 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). She introduced the concept of a “health literacy environment” that is shaping examinations of barriers to care in hospitals, health centers, and social service agencies. Her long-standing emphasis on the dual components of literacy: social system demands and the skills of individuals has reshaped definition of terms with a focus on health literacy as an interaction and not simply a characteristic of individuals. She served on
the Institute of Medicine Committee on Health Literacy, on the National Research Council Committee on Measuring Adult Literacy, on the Joint Commission Advisory Committee on Health Literacy and Patient Safety. She currently serves on several national advisory boards and is principal investigator and co-principal investigator on several health literacy research inquiries. Dr. Rudd serves as Senior Health Literacy Advisor to the Missouri Foundation and holds appointments as Visiting Professor at London South Bank University and as Visiting Senior Scholar at the Horowitz Health Literacy Center, University of Maryland School of Public Health. Rima Rudd is considered a leader in this new field of inquiry.
Dean Schillinger, M.D., is a practicing primary care physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH), an urban public hospital, where he sees patients, teaches in the primary care residency program, and conducts research as a member of the UCSF Primary Care Research Center. In his administrative capacities, he has directed the Medi-Cal managed care clinic at SFGH, the ambulatory care clinics at SFGH, and has been the Director of Clinical Operations for the Department of Medicine. He is currently the Director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, a new research center committed to transforming clinical and public health practice and policy to improve health and health care for socially vulnerable people. Dr. Schillinger has focused his research on health care for vulnerable populations, including the impact of managed care, improving systems of care for publicly insured and uninsured patients, and most recently, health communication. His current work has focused on literacy, health communication, and chronic disease prevention and management. He has carried out a number of studies exploring the impact of limited health literacy on the care of patients with diabetes and heart disease, and was honored with the 2003 Institute for Healthcare Advancement Research Award for this work. He was recently awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health, The California Endowment, the Commonwealth Fund, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the California Health Care Foundation, to develop and evaluate disease-management programs tailored to the literacy and language needs of patients with chronic disease, and is a co-investigator for the National Association of Public Health and Hospital Institute’s Diabetes Quality Improvement Consortium. Dr. Schillinger contributed to the 2004 Institute of Medicine Report on Health Literacy, is a section editor for the textbooks Understanding Health Literacy (AMA press) and Caring for Vulnerable and Underserved Populations (Lange series, 2007), and is a former member of the American College of Physician’s Health Communication Advisory Board. He completed an Open Society Institute Advocacy Fellowship working with California Literacy, Inc., a nonprofit educational organi-
zation that helps people gain literacy skills, to advance the California Health Literacy Initiative. He recently returned from a semester as Visiting Scholar at the University of Chile School of Public Health to help develop chronic disease prevention and treatment initiatives.
Pam C. Silberman, J.D., Dr.Ph., is the President and CEO of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM). In the last year, she has helped to staff task forces on Prevention, Access to Care, Adolescent Health, Behavioral Health Needs of the Military and their Families, Co-Location of Different Populations in Adult Care Homes, and work to develop Healthy North Carolina 2020 goals and objectives. In recent years, she has also helped staff task forces on Substance Abuse Services, and Transitions for People with Intellectual or Other Developmental Disabilities, Health Literacy, Primary Care and Specialty Supply, Chronic Kidney Disease, the Ethical Issues that would Arise in Event of an Influenza Pandemic, Covering the Uninsured, the Health Care Safety Net, Nursing Workforce, Latino Health, NC Health Choice, Long-Term Care, and Dental Care Access. Dr. Silberman is also the Publisher of the North Carolina Medical Journal. She serves as Associate Director for Policy Analysis with the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC. She is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC, and teaches courses on underserved populations and safety-net programs. Dr. Silberman served on numerous legislative Commissions, including NC Legislative Study Commission on Medicaid Reform (2003–2005), Managed Care (2000–2001), Access to Health Insurance (1991–1993); and Indigent Care (1985–1989).
Cynthia Solomon is a nationally recognized Health Advocate and the Founder and President, of FollowMe, Inc. a Personal Health Record company launched in 2000. Her organization specializes in developing customized Personal Health Records for vulnerable populations such as www.mivia.org, a PHR initially developed for migrant and seasonal farm workers launched in 2003 and www.healthshack.info, a PHR developed for Homeless and System Based Youth launched January 2010 as well as www.followmyheart.org, a PHR developed in partnership with Children’s National Medical Center and the American College of Cardiology for patients diagnosed with congenital heart disease launched October 2010. Ms. Solomon participated as a member of the Markle Foundation Connecting for Health Workgroup in developing the recommendations and standards for interoperability between electronic health records (EHRs) and personal health records (PHRs). She has presented testimony on PHR technology to the NCVHS NHII workgroup and the Consumer Empowerment Workgroup–American Health Information Community on the role
of Government in PHR technology and the Presidential IT Commission on Interoperability (www.endingthedocumentgame.gov), as well as the IOM Roundtable on Health Literacy and the ONC HIT Policy Committee, Using HIT to Eliminate Disparities. She is currently serving on the ONC Health IT Workgroup and Panel “Understanding the Impact of Health IT in Underserved Communities.”
A. Eugene Washington, M.D., M.Sc., assumed his role as Vice Chancellor and Dean in February 2010. He is an internationally renowned clinical investigator and health-policy scholar whose wide-ranging research has been instrumental in shaping national health policy and practice guidelines. As Vice Chancellor and Dean, Dr. Washington oversees the UCLA Health System and the David Geffen School of Medicine, and serves as the principal spokesperson for health sciences at UCLA. Prior to coming to UCLA, Dr. Washington served as Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost for UCSF, where he co-founded the Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations. He also co-founded the UCSF-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center and, from 1996 to 2004, chaired the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. He has published extensively in his major areas of research, which include prenatal genetic testing, cervical cancer screening and prevention, noncancerous uterine conditions management, reproductive tract infections, quality of healthcare and racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes. Dr. Washington has earned numerous honors and awards, including the Outstanding Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service, and election to the IOM of the National Academy of Sciences, where he serves on the governing Council of IOM. He also serves on the boards of the Robert Wood Johnton Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation, and the congressionally mandated Scientific Management Review Board of the National Institutes of Health.
