The two founders of How To Health Literacy bring a lifetime of experience in public health, health communication and education, academic research, teaching and community development.
We’re translating all this experience into building communication and education tools that work.
We’ve spent over 30 years learning about:
- what people do and don’t understand about health,
- what scientific, mathematical and other concepts and skills are fundamental to understanding
- how culture mediates information, meaning and uptake, and
- what contributes to the “tipping point” for people to take action for better health.
The result—health communication and tools that are understandable, compelling and that enable individuals to understand and use information to support positive health behaviors.
What motivates us at H2HL
As a society all of us are faced with serious and urgent individual and public health problems. These include the growing burden of chronic disease, childhood and adult obesity, pandemics and man-made and natural disasters. In every instance, individuals must be participants in health decisions, prevention and disease management.
The pressing need to address barriers to understanding health information is widely recognized and has led to a growing interest in health literacy. We define health literacy as the wide range of skills and competencies that people have to seek out, comprehend, evaluate, and use health information and concepts to make informed choices, reduce health risks, and improve health outcomes and overall quality of life (Zarcadoolas, Pleasant & Greer, 2006). [again insert links as above to the book]
Our company, How To Health Literacy (H2HL), is taking a revolutionary approach to health education and communication. We start from the assumption that there is no reason to keep good health information a mystery; in the realm of ‘scientists only’. To change X health behavior, most people need to know Y. We work on communicating the “WHY” in an engaging way. We communicate good, credible reasons for why people should take key steps to protect their health. Healthier and safer people, workplaces, schools and public spaces all require people to use and spread good health and safety information.
Bios
Christina Zarcadoolas
Christina 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. She is on the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dept. of Community and Preventive Medicine. Prior to that she spent 15 years on the faculty of Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies teaching courses on public perception of the environment and environmental communications and doing applied, collaborative research with communities.
She wrote the textbook, 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, science, civic literacy and cultural literacy. Dr. Zarcadoolas is currently studying and writing a textbook exploring the barriers to communicating disasters, emergency preparedness and other risk information.
Dr. Zarcadoolas is the chief health literacy consultant to the New York City Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYDOHMH) Public Health Detailing program. Her responsibility is to incorporate health literacy principles and practice into materials and messages. She leads a team of health literacy experts who have been conducting health literacy load analyses of existing NYCDOHMH public education materials, and is conducting the field research to redesign and design new materials, including the newest “Adult Obesity Detailing Kit” and “Pediatric Obesity Detailing Kit”.
Dr. Zarcadoolas’ work is presently focused in three areas of public health: chronic disease management, informatics, and emergency preparedness communication. She is currently working on a new book entitled, The Simplicity Complex in Health and American Life, which will explore the limits of a simplification approach to communicating health and science to the public.
She brings her hands-on experience in market research and social marketing to consulting assignments for both corporate and governmental clients. Her work focuses on analyzing and improving communication strategies and approaches with vulnerable populations. Among her consulting activities are:
- conducting readability and usability audits of print and web based consumer materials
- strategic planning to communicating complex information to average and low-literate publics;
- revising scientific data, GIS map information, complex health data for lay publics
- staff development and training in health and environmental literacy
- organizational development – integrating best practice guidelines for communicating health and environmental issues
Visit Christina Zarcadoolas’ website.
Joslyn Levy
Joslyn Levy is the president of Joslyn Levy & Associates, a health care consulting firm dedicated to improving health care quality and outcomes. Her firm provides technical assistance, expertise and project management to foundations, public health agencies, clinical providers, and other key stakeholders dedicated to improving individual and community health. Current engagements address improving management of depression in primary care, integrating a public health insurance option into a commercial health insurance exchange, enhancing health plan capacity to facilitate improvements in asthma management, redesigning care to achieve improved diabetes outcomes, developing training for quality improvement coaches, and developing interventions to reduce teen pregnancy.
Ms. Levy’s experience combines public health leadership and clinical nursing. Before establishing her own firm, she served at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for close to a decade, most recently as Director of the Clinical Systems Improvement (CSI) Program in the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, leading large scale quality improvement initiatives and educational outreach programs to inform primary care practice teams about new public health policies and clinical best practices. She also played a key role in the development of NYC’s new electronic health record (EHR) initiative, designing strategies for EHR-enhanced quality improvement and integrating critical quality improvement tools into the EHR, including registries and self-management support tools.
The development of innovative approaches to consumer and health care provider education was a hallmark of Ms Levy’s tenure at the Department and continues to be a primary area of interest. She is a champion of self-management support strategies and has developed unique training programs for preparing health care teams to assist patients with health promotion and chronic disease management, including goal setting, medication taking and healthy eating.
Ms. Levy has held positions at several New York City health care quality improvement organizations and was co-founder of the Women’s Resource Center of New York. She began her career as a nurse specializing in women’s health at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Ms. Levy is a graduate of Columbia University with degrees from both the School of Nursing and the School of Public Health.