Hosanna An
Hosanna An (she/her) earned her B.A. in Psychology from The Ohio State University in 2022. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in health psychology at The Ohio State University. Her research interests include the intersections of stress, psychological factors, and well-being, with a particular emphasis on pain.
Kellan Baker
Dr. Kellan Baker is the Executive Director of Whitman-Walker Institute, which works to create healthier communities and advance health equity for all through person-centered research and innovative policy solutions. The Institute is affiliated with Whitman-Walker Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center with more than 50 years of service to diverse communities in Washington, D.C. and beyond. Kellan has been a frequent advisor to government and private entities on LGBTQI+ health and health equity for more than 15 years, and he holds appointments as affiliate faculty in the Departments of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Kellan received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, where he was the Centennial Scholar and a Health Policy Research Scholar; an M.P.H. and M.A. from the George Washington University; and a B.A. with high honors from Swarthmore College.
Mark Bakker
Dept. of International Health / Dept. of Internal Medicine (Rheumatology division)
Mark Bakker is a public health lecturer and health literacy researcher at Maastricht University (Medical Centre+), the Netherlands. Through his work experience as a physiotherapist and subsequent public health education, Mark became passionate about improving health for all through transformation of healthcare organisations and systems. The primary focus of his research is the health literacy responsiveness of care for people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs). He regularly delivers lectures and workshops on health literacy responsiveness to healthcare professionals. Mark is an active member of IHLA and the Dutch Health Literacy Alliance.
Isaac Baez
Isaac Baez will join the Pathways Community HUB Institute® (PCHI®) as the Assistant Director of Education and Training in July 2024. He will support PCHI®'s mission to address health disparities and advance health equity by developing and implementing training programs for Community Health Workers (CHWs) in both English and Spanish. In his new role, Isaac will foster collaboration among staff, consultants, and partners, teach the PCHI® curriculum in live and virtual settings, oversee and administer training, and manage the translation of program materials.
Isaac has been the Director of the Summa Health Equity Center since January 2023 and has been with Summa Health since May 2021. In this role, he led strategic initiatives to address the social, economic, and structural determinants of health in collaboration with internal departments, community partners, and external constituents.
Isaac holds a Master's in Public Health from NEOMED and is a Certified Diversity Executive (CDE) through the Institute of Diversity Certification. He has conducted training sessions on Cultural and Linguistic Competency, Cultural Humility, Language Access, and LGBTQ+ 101 throughout Stark and Summit Counties. His dedication to underserved populations is reflected in his involvement with groups such as the March for Akron Pride Festival's Steering Committee, Akron-Canton Latino Committee, Refugee Task Force, Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence (OAESV), and the Board of Plexus LGBT + Allied Chamber of Commerce.
Jennifer Anne Bishop
Dr. Bishop has over 20 years of experience in health communication, health literacy, and health policy within the federal government. She has a proven record of promoting women’s health and has led the design and evaluation of health promotion materials, multicultural outreach efforts, new media initiatives, and partnership development. Dr. Bishop earned her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a Master of Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She holds a Doctor of Science in Health Communication and Social Policy from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She currently serves on the Steering Committee for the Society for Health Communication and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Communication Advisory Group. Her research focuses on leveraging health communication and health literacy to reduce health disparities.
Christine R. Borge
Lovisenberg Diaconal University College, Department of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, University of Oslo and Lovisenberg Diaconal Hospital, Norway
C.R. Borge has experience in quantitative (surveys, RCTs), qualitative and co-design research in the field of health literacy. She has successfully led research projects and groups and used the Ophelia process to develop interventions for complex patients with chronic diseases in community and specialist health services in the areas of health economics, health literacy, coping and quality of life. The WHO has recognized this work as a National Health Literacy Demonstration Project
Gundhild Brørs
Department of Public Health and Nursing, Trondheim, Norway
Gunhild Brørs (RN, PhD) is head of department for the service of nursing at Clinic of cardiology, St. Olavs university hospital in Trondheim, Norway. Additionally, she is associated professor at Norwegian university of science and technology (NTNU) with the responsibility for cardiovascular nursing. Brørs finished her PhD-project in 2023 where she aimed to determine health literacy, eHealth literacy and coronary artery disease risk factors in patients following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
Anita Bucur, MPA, MBA
Anita Bucur is the bilingual program administrator for the UAMS Center for Health Literacy. In this role, she maintains and executes clearly written protocols for delivering the Center’s field testing and Spanish plain language services. In addition, Anita leads CHL’s work to maintain custom patient education materials at UAMS. Anita has presented at both state and national conferences, and has served as a judge for multiple plain language and health literacy awards.
Anita graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a double bachelor’s degree in international studies and Spanish. She holds a master’s degree in public administration and a master’s degree in business administration from UA Little Rock.
Christina Dragon
Christina (she|her) serves as the Measurement and Data Lead in the NIH Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office and part time supporting the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health as the SOGI Data Implementation Specialist. Previously she served as the Sexual and Gender Minority Data Lead in Medicare’s Office of Minority Health and as the data analyst for the Health People 2020 LGBT Health topic area at the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC. She serves on the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Sex Characteristics Subcommittee of the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) and in 2022 led the subgroup on SOGI data for administrative forms for the interagency working group on the Federal Evidence Agenda on LGBTQI+ Equity, published in January 2023. Besides SGM data Christina also worked on two public health emergencies, the Ebola Response 2015 with the CDC and the COVID-19 pandemic response (2020-2021) while working to protect worker safety and health with OSHA. Christina holds a Masters’ Degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a double major from Smith College in Neuroscience and Woman and Gender Studies. Outside of work, Christina rows with the LGBTQ rowing team, the DC Strokes, trains for the next marathon, and gardens.
Grace Foster
Co-Founder Grace Aldridge Foster has been training writers for over a decade. She has worked with organizations including Capital One, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the Aspen Institute, and the DC Public Education Fund. She has taught professional writing at Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and McDonough School of Business. Her own writing has appeared in academic publications, Smithsonian Insider, and Forbes, where she is a Careers and Leadership Contributor.
Laura Graham
Laurel is primarily responsible for the development and management of the Dental Library. She preaches every day, 9-5, from her home pulpit on Fridays; the necessity of vetting all evidence after searching properly a variety of sources to answer one's well-developed clinical, as well as any other type of, question, in addition to her everyday role of ringleader at the Dental Circus Library. Each year, she officiates the Lecture Circus: an academic exercise in interdisciplinary discourse and discovery! Laurel's wide range of experience includes both operational and research expertise, including evidence-based dentistry research, teaching, and systematic reviews. She came to Penn from the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry in Chicago, where she worked as Senior Evidence-based Dentistry Manager. Laurel has co-authored systematic reviews specifically related to dental medicine. She earned her BA and MLS at SUNY Buffalo, and a Master of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Jamie Griffith
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Dr. Griffith is interested in mental health, including depression and anxiety, in a variety of populations. He is also interested in the optimisation of clinical assessment, informed by applied statistics and psychometric theory.
Joan I. Gluch, Ph.D., RDH, PHDHP
Division Chief and Professor of Clinical Community Health
University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine
At Penn Dental Medicine (PDM), Joan Gluch serves as Division Chief and Professor of Clinical Community Oral Health, leading twenty two faculty and staff in four community dental care programs and overseeing the required PDM courses in behavioral sciences, community and public health, health promotion and practice management interests focus on expanding access to oral health promotion and clinical care in community settings with continuous funding for PDM community initiatives since 2001. Dr Gluch is licensed as a dental hygienist and public health dental hygiene practitioner in Pennsylvania, and earned the Certificate in Dental Hygiene from Temple University, Bachelor in Science in Dental Hygiene from Columbia University, Masters in Education from Temple University and PhD in Education, Culture and Society from University of Pennsylvania.
Katherina Hauner
Katherina Hauner is an Assistant Professor in the department of Medical Social Sciences (MSS) at Northwestern University, whose research interests include affective processing and emotion regulation. Prior to joining MSS, she was a Research Scientist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Aman Kaur
Amanpreet Kaur, CFCS, MLIS is the Health Literacy Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Leon Levy Dental Medicine Library, which serves the information needs of the School of Dental Medicine. In collaboration with School of Dental Medicine's Community Oral Health Division, Aman coordinates the Health Literacy Study Club, a hybrid student -led discussion series for anyone interested in health literacy and patient education focused on oral health and dental medicine. Aman is also a part-time Master of Public Health student at the Perelman School of Medicine and a lecturer at the Rutgers University School of Communication & Information.
Dušanka Krajnović
Katie Leath, MPH, MA
Katie Leath’s personal mission is to improve the health of others through clear communication. This purpose combined with her decade of experience in public health and communications, makes her an especially effective leader in the field. As the director of the UAMS Center for Health Literacy, she leads a team of health literacy and plain language experts who create and edit award-winning health materials for patients and consumers. This important work has made health information more accessible, understandable, and actionable for countless patients and consumers across Arkansas and beyond. Katie also supports plain language efforts across the nation as a board member for the Center for Plain Language.
Sophia W. Light
Sophia W. Light is a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She is currently on clinical internship at the University of Chicago, specializing in behavioral medicine. Her primary research interests are in aging, modifiable lifestyle factors, social determinants of health, and equity-based behavioral health interventions. She completed her doctoral dissertation with a mixed methods investigation funded by the NIA that sought to identify unmet brain health-related information and action needs among middle-aged Latinos. She plans to continue this work on postdoctoral fellowship, with the goal of developing and optimizing patient-centered, culturally-informed, and health system-based brain health interventions.
Mary Martell
Mary Martell currently serves as the Director of Education and Training for the Pathways Community HUB Institute®. She has more than 20 years of expertise in program development and post-secondary education. Additionally, Mary has worked closely with PCHI for several years, serving as director of a Pathways Community HUB (PCH) in northeastern Ohio as well as serving as a training consultant. Mary received her graduate and undergraduate degrees in health and human services from The University of Akron and is currently working towards her doctorate in educational leadership at Youngstown State University. She is actively involved in many community based boards and national committees including the Tyler Scott Lancaster Foundation of whose focus is the awareness and education throughout the community and nation, supporting all those who have been touched by . In addition, Mary serves to support the Risk Reduction Research Network who has an overarching goal to explore ways to expand and move research forward in support comprehensive, community-based care coordination in efforts to address health and racial inequities and improve public health and health literacy.
Tracy Mehan
Tracy Mehan’s professional interests center on the effective communication of injury prevention messages. She addresses this focus by conducting research, developing networks of individuals interested in sharing injury prevention messages and by creating content for a variety of mediums (including websites, fact sheets, blogs, videos, social media, press releases, reports, briefs, and more). She is also passionate about teaching others how to translate their research for non-scientific audiences, how to utilize a variety of methods to communicate messages, how to work with the media. More recently, she has been working on the intersection of health communication and AI. She is the Director of Research Translation and Communication for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. In addition to that role, she also serves as an AI SME for IHA.
Samuel Mendez
Samuel is a PhD candidate in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Their dissertation focuses on the implications of social media communication and artificial intelligence for organizational health literacy. Their work also includes a focus on supporting the practice of health communication online. Earlier this year, they published the Digital Safety Kit for Public Health, providing actionable tips for individuals and organizations in the face of antiscience harassment. They also publish Health Literacy Right Now, a monthly newsletter providing usable tips for health literacy in an era of networked technologies.
Vishala Mishra
Vishala Mishra is a trained physician-informaticist with a current research focus on consumer health technologies leveraging a human-centred design approach applications of natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) for improving health communication and information access.
Rowida Mohamed
Rowida Mohamed holds a BA in Pharmaceutical Sciences, an MS in Biostatistics from Egypt, and a PhD in Health Services and Outcomes Research from the USA. Her research centers on measurement science, with a focus on developing and validating patient-reported outcomes (PRO) tools for clinical and health services research. She also has experience in leveraging real-world evidence (RWE) from electronic medical records (EMR) to enhance health outcomes and advance patient-centered care.
Lana Moriarty, M.P.H.
Lana Moriarty serves as a Senior Advisor in the Office of Policy at the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Lana provides strategic vision and leadership to the Interoperability Division around patient access, patient identity and matching, and patient engagement. She works to educate and empower individuals via technology to be active and equal partners with their care team members in decision making and managing their health and wellness. Prior to serving in this role, Lana focused on improving access to health care for the nation’s most underserved communities by managing the National Health Service Corps and NURSE Corps. Prior to this role, Ms. Moriarty was with the World Bank Group, where she worked as a Gender Specialist to ensure the needs of women and girls were included in the Bank’s overseas development operations. From 1993-1997 and 2000- 2001, Ms. Moriarty served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the West African countries of Benin and Togo, where she focused on HIV/AIDS education and prevention, and rural community development issues. Ms. Moriarty holds a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Maryland, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Trade from Auburn University.
May Navarra
May Navarra is a senior research assistant at the GenderCare Center at Boston Medical Center. Their research interests include transgender health, patient centered care, and community centered interventions. Currently, their studies focus on improving how we collect sexual orientation and gender identity data for electronic medical records. They believe that the people conducting the research should look like the population being studied. May is proud to be part of the growing body of trans researchers in this field.
Dulce Do Ó
Department of Studies, Projects and Clinical Trials Associação Protectora dos Diabéticos de Portugal
Graduated in nurse, Specialist in Community Nursing and Master in Public Health and PhD in Public Health-National School of Public Health (Nova University), with the research on Health Literacy and Diabetes. Nurse coordinator of the Department of studies, projects and clinical trials and Project Manager at APDP – Portuguese Diabetes Association. Coordinated and participated in national and international projects related with prevention and treatment of diabetes or other NCDs, health education, health literacy, behaviors change, adherence and participatory methods in into planning, implementation, and evaluation. Co-coordinator of the Diabetes Education Study Group of SPD – Portuguese Diabetes Society
Joshua Chigozie Ogbuefi
Joshua is Health Communications Fellow with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Prevention (ODPHP). Joshua supports projects focused on health literacy and office strategic communications. Prior to his work at ODPHP, he worked as an intern at the CDC Division of Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Obesity on a project focused on health equity and health communications. He received his Master of Public Health in Health Promotion and Behavior from the University of Georgia and Bachelor of Science in Public Health from The Ohio State University. Currently, Joshua is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health.
Signe Olsbø
Oslo University Hospital, Department of Gastrointestinal and Children Surgery Norway
Oslo University Hospital, Department of Gastrointestinal and Children Surgery Norway
Dr. Olsbø is an Oslo based physician working at Oslo University Hospital department of pediatric surgery. Currently conducting research in health literacy in parents of children with congenital gastrointestinal conditions.
Michael Paasche-Orlow
Welcome to HARC XVI – hard to believe the relentless wheel of time. It is great to see the field continue to adapt and grow.
Thank you for those who have been with us along the way and fantastic to have so many new people as well.
Professor Richard H Osborne, BSc, PhD
Richard is prolific public health researcher, educator and program implementer. His teams have developed and implemented evidence-based and practical tools and processes to make substantive impacts on health and equity, not only at the project level, but at the state, regional, national, and international levels.
He is Distinguished Professor of Health Sciences and Director, Centre for Global Health and Equity, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He holds appointments at Santé publique France, France, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. His team was recently awarded a prestigious 5-year Australian NHMRC Investigator Grant (L3) to advance health literacy development globally. He is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2018, 2021) top 1% most influential researcher globally, having published over 300 original scientific research papers.
He is an adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous government agencies. With global partners, his team created WHO’s 2022 Health Literacy Development for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases four-volume report. Five years of work with global experts and field workers generated new health literacy concepts and tools for practical implementation by Member States.
Richard attributes his team’s exceptional track record in innovation and subsequent impact of their tools and processes to authentic listening to diverse people with lived experience and the service providers in the field. This is reflected in the wide and repeated use of their tools by over 1000 teams, most notably the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) used in over 80 countries. Authentic and lasting impact is a key feature of the team’s Ophelia (Optimising Health Literacy and Access) co-design and services redesign process. It is featured in WHO National Health Literacy Development projects (20+ countries), and the EU Commission Joint Action on Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes (JACARDI) where Ophelia, co-led with Santé publique France, is implemented by government agencies in 13 EU countries across 24 projects.
Elizabeth Powell, DDS, MPH
Elizabeth Powell, DDS, MPH recently joined Penn Dental Medicine as the Assistant Director for the Division of Community Oral Health. She is a dual faculty appointed Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry and Community Oral Health. Prior to joining PDM, Dr. Powell served as the Dental Director at Codman Square Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Boston. During her tenure at Codman, she led the NYU Langone AEGD residency program and held concurrent faculty appointments at Tufts and Boston University. She received her Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from New York University and completed a dual residency in dental public health and pediatric dentistry at Boston University. Dr. Powell is passionate about the movement to increase access to dental care and reduce oral health disparities. She is certain that oral health equity is achievable and is excited about engaging with and preparing the next generation of dentists to improve oral health outcomes.
Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, M.Ed.
Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, M.Ed., is Assistant Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine where she teaches health literacy to health professionals in training, trains health professionals in practice, and is committed to improving the health literacy of individuals, families and communities. She is Senior Research Specialist for the Center for Health Literacy Research + Practice at Tufts Medicine where she is working to integrate applied health literacy and plain language throughout the clinical research life cycle. Her areas of study and practice include the application of adult learning theory in public health promotion and plain language principles applied to key information on informed consent forms. Ms. Kurtz-Rossi is an active member of the International Health Literacy Association dedicated to advancing health literacy for all individuals, families, organizations, and societies. She is recognized for her work to develop health literacy programs for English language learners, develop easy-to-read health information in multiple languages, and promote health literacy and health equity. Her work is informed by her training in adult learning theory and is driven by her belief in education for transformational change.
Russell Rothman, MD MPP
Dr. Rothman is Professor of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Health Policy, Ingram Professor of Integrative and Population Health, and the Senior Vice President for Population and Public Health at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He also serves as the Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health and Associate Dean for Population Health Sciences. Dr. Rothman is an expert in health services research and health communication. His research focuses on addressing health communication, health literacy/numeracy, and other social and behavioral factors to improve health. He has been the Principal Investigator on over $100 million in funded research and has authored over 200 publications. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the STAR (Stakeholders, Technology and Research) Clinical Research Network, which engages Vanderbilt, Meharry, Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, Health Sciences of South Carolina, Essentia, Mayo, and Stanford in real world evidence and pragmatic research and includes electronic health data on over 25 million patients. Dr. Rothman is a practicing primary care physician, and previously served as the Chief of the Internal/Medicine Pediatrics Section. He also served as the Principal Investigator of the CMS funded Mid-South Practice Transformation Network which engaged 4,000 clinicians across over 100 practices in quality improvement efforts. Dr. Rothman is also the past president of the Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH).
Gill Rowlands
Harvey Schanel
Schanel serves as the HUB Director for the Community Action Pathways HUB Program at the Stark County Community Action Agency. She leads her team to encourage, support, advocate for, and activate the power of the women and families served. The program has a priority focus on addressing infant mortality, which is accomplished through building relationships with clients and community partners.
Schanel is the founder and CEO of OWBO by Schanel Leaté LLC, the parent company of The Cake Princess and Your Dash. Her diverse professional background is accompanied by a bachelor’s degree in biology and a Master of Business Administration in Human Resource Management; she is also a member of Sigma Beta Delta—International Honor Society for Business, Management and Administration. Schanel is a Society of Human Resource Management—Certified Professional (SHRM-CP), she has a certification as a Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA), and a Certification in Perinatal Issues and is currently completing studies to be a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Schanel is the current President-Elect of the Junior League of Stark County. She strives to lift others as she grows personally, spiritually, and professionally; rather than giving others a fish for the day, she believes in teaching others how to fish so that they never go without.
Eloisa Serrano
Eloisa Serrano (she/her/hers) is a Clinical Psychology Doctoral Candidate at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. She is currently a full-time Psychology Intern at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, IL. She also holds a BA and MA in Sociology from DePaul University and an MS in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University. Her research interests include health disparities, health literacy, women’s health, and trauma-focused clinical treatment. During her time at Northwestern, she has focused her research on health literacy assessment, especially in minority populations (including monolingual Spanish speakers). Currently, she is working on her dissertation and completing work on a self-guided pelvic floor disorder program for minority women with the Department of Urogynecology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Kristine Sorensen
Dr. Carl Streed, Jr.
Dr. Carl Streed, Jr. is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Section of General Internal Medicine at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine and the Research Lead for the GenderCare Center at Boston Medical Center. As the Research Lead for the GenderCare Center at Boston Medical Center he collaborates with researchers, clinicians, and communities to assess and address the health and well-being of transgender and gender diverse individuals.
To achieve equity in healthcare access, health, and community well-being, Dr. Streed actively incorporates the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility into his work as a clinician-investigator. As such, his personal and professional pursuit for a more equitable and inclusive society is focused on elevating voices often ignored and redistributing power. His clinical, training, advocacy, and research initiatives regarding the health and well-being of marginalized persons, particularly sexual and gender minority populations (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] persons), have been used to influence and inform institutional, state, and federal policy as well as clinical care, academic research, and scholarship.
Britney Sun
Britney Sun is a research coordinator in the Center for Applied Health Research on Aging at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. She has a BA in Anthropology and Biology from Washington University in St. Louis. Her primary research interests are in structural determinants of health and health equity, with a particular interest in neighborhood deprivation and an ultimate goal of developing community-centered interventions to promote equity.
Susie Sykes
Susie Sykes is Professor of Public Health and Health Promotion in the Institute of Health and Social Care at London South Bank University. She has a background in public health practice in both the voluntary and public sector before moving into academic public health. She is the Director of PHIRST South Bank (Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Team), an NIHR-funded, UK-wide inter-disciplinary Public Health evaluation Centre. She is also Director of LSBU’s Health and Wellbeing Research Centre. Susie has written and presented extensively on health literacy with a particular interest in critical health literacy and is part of several international collaborations including as Vice Chair of the IUHPE Global Working Group on Health Literacy.
Temese Szalai
Temese Szalai is the CEO and Founder of Subtextive, an AI consultancy.
She is an AI expert with over 20 years of experience in natural language processing (NLP), knowledge representation and machine learning. She is a recognized leader with a proven record of delivering responsible, actionable, real-world AI strategy and results. Over a decade ago, Temese became passionate about using AI to help with health literacy efforts while consulting with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) on a project called “Speaking Genetics”. With the recent advent of generative AI technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs), she has renewed her commitment to applying AI and technology to meet health literacy needs ethically, responsibly and meaningfully.
Abigail Vogeley
Abigail Vogeley is a second-year clinical psychology doctoral student at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. With a focus in adult neuropsychology, she currently works clinically in Northwestern’s outpatient neuropsychology clinic and conducts research within the Center for Applied Health Research on Aging. Previously, she held a research fellowship at the NIMH, where she studied cognition in the context of treatment resistant depression. Her research interests encompass cognitive impairment, aging, midlife health behaviors, and depressive symptomatology. She aims to continue her work on the assessment of cognition, and how it relates to health outcomes throughout the lifespan.
Astrid K. Wahl
Department of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway
Department of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway
Professor Astrid K. Wahl is employed at the Department of Interdisciplinary health Sciences, University of Oslo and the Department of Transplantation Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo in Norway. She has background in health science, has several years of experience in clinical research and intervention design on health literacy, quality of life, and self-management issues related to different chronic diseases.
Professor Diane Levin-Zamir, PhD, MPH, MCHES
Diane Levin-Zamir is the National Director of the Health Promotion Department of Clalit, Israel's largest healthcare organization, Full Professor of Public Health at the University of Haifa, and teaches at Tel Aviv University Medical School's School of Public Health. A founder/leader of the IUHPE Health Literacy Global Working Group, and the Israel Health Promoters/Educators Association, she chairs the Israel Health Ministry's National Health Promotion Council. She serves as the Research Co-Chair for the WHO Action Network on MPOHL for the European Region, and the Chair of the Technical Advisory Group for the Behavioral and Cultural Insights (BCI) Unit in WHO-Euro. Diane has extensively published articles, chapters, and co-edited books, specializing in health promotion/health literacy action, research and policy, focusing on special populations, cultural appropriateness, communities, hospitals, primary care and media/digital settings. Over the past two decades she has made over 165 presentations at international and national conferences on topics of her expertise, including numerous invited plenary/keynote addresses. She serves as PI for the Israel National Health Literacy Survey and scientific advisor for international health literacy associations, is Associate Editor of the Global Health Promotion and is active in the International Health Literacy Association as the Chair of the Scientific Programme Commitee for the Global Health Literacy Summit, 2024.