Discussion Announcement

In this discussion we will look at the results of the health literacy data from the 2003 NAAL. Our guests will be Cynthia Baur from CDC, who was the HHS liaison to the U.S. Department of Education for the development of the health literacy component of the NAAL, and Mark Kutner from AIR, who was directly involved in the implementation of the study. Using the Institute's recent webcast as an introduction to these results, we will look at the main trends in the status and demographics of health literacy skills in the U.S., and identify objectives for the field based on these results.

Guest Biographies

Cynthia Baur, Ph.D., is the Director, Division of Health Communication and Marketing, National Center for Health Marketing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Division is responsible for a wide variety of health communication and marketing activities and projects, including promoting health literacy improvement. Prior to her current position, Dr. Baur was the senior health communication advisor in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), HHS. In ODPHP, she led the Healthy People 2010 Health Communication Focus Area that includes the national objective to improve health literacy. She is the co-chair of the HHS workgroup on health literacy. She was the HHS lead on the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), managed the development of the national health literacy action plan in Communicating Health: Priorities and Strategies for Progress (2003) and organized the Surgeon General's Workshop on Improving Health Literacy. Dr. Baur holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Mark Kutner directed the recently completed National Assessment of Adult Literacy, including the health literacy component. In that role he was the lead author of the NAAL report, "The Health Literacy of America's Adults, Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy," and also was among the authors of the other study reports.
Dr. Kutner has been working in the adult education and literacy field for the past 20 years, including in projects related to professional development and the design of effective programs. He is also Vice President for Workforce Research and Analysis at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). AIR is currently conducting additional reanalyzes of NAAL data for the Departments of Labor and Education, and recently completed an issue brief for AHRQ using NAAL data.

Discussion Preparation

See the report: The Health Literacy of America's Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy

View the National Institute for Literacy's recent webcast asbout the NAAL Health Literacy Results

Last updated: Thursday, 03-Sep-2009 16:04:06 EDT