About the Speaker: Alexa McCray PhD
Dr. McCray's research interests lie at the intersection of computer and information science and medicine. She publishes in several research areas, including medical language processing, digital libraries, and consumer health informatics. Dr. McCray is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.

Abstract:
Addressing health literacy -the ability to read, understand, and act on health information - is one of the most pressing issues in our healthcare system today. Perhaps the most significant challenge we face is to make health information accessible to everyone, regardless of background, education, or literacy level. This talk will review some of the extensive literature in health literacy and will indicate a range of techniques and methods to address the problems we face. Needed are tools to assess and modify the comprehensibility of health materials, methods for improving access to information, and the development of evaluation metrics for assessing usability and understandability.