Sessions
Disrupting the Norm: Innovative Approaches for the Work Ahead
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM Thu
Dr. Rima Rudd, has been a member of the faculty in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences within the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for over 30 years. Her work and teaching initially focused on the design and evaluation of community based public health programs. In the mid 1990s, she began to focus her teaching as well as her research studies on health literacy with an emphasis on health disparities and literacy related barriers to health information, health programs, and health care. A founder of and leader in health literacy studies, Dr. Rudd drafted the first national call to action, served on the original Institute of Medicine Health Literacy Committee, and has written and contributed to multiple health policy reports, white papers, and research studies. She is helping to broaden the notion of health literacy with attention to the communication skills of health and health care professionals and to the barriers and facilitating factors in health environments. She is an advisor to several non-profit health literacy organizations and is engaged in research and policy projects in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Dr. Rudd has received multiple awards for her contribution to this burgeoning area of study and practice.