Newswise — CFAH today announced the appointment of nine new patient engagement experts to its Fellows program. The new CFAH Fellows are Carol Alter, MD; Connie Davis, MN, ARNP; Kate Lorig, RN, DrPH; Judith Hibbard, PhD, MPH; Molly Mettler, MSW; Dale Shaller, MPA; Joshua J. Seidman, PhD; David Sobel, MD, MPH; and Shoshanna Sofaer, DrPH. CFAH Fellows are chosen for their demonstrated commitment to increasing individuals’ ability to participate actively and knowledgeably in their own health and health care. During their two-year terms, each Fellow will collaborate with CFAH to raise the priority of people’s engagement in their health care as a critical determinant of the health of individuals and the nation.
“We are pleased that each of these extraordinary individuals is willing to join our effort to bring rigor and coherence to this very important aspect of health care,” said Jessie Gruman, PhD, CFAH president and founder. “The new Fellows Program reflects CFAH’s expanding efforts to increase the body of evidence and research around engaging people in their health and health care.”
Recent efforts to address the challenges of the American health care system have primarily focused on access. However, the important issue of people’s ability to manage their new responsibilities as patients has been largely overlooked. Evidence has focused on the financial burden of uninsured Americans but has neglected to account for the cost of patients who are unable, or unwilling, to participate effectively in their health care. Patients who do not actively direct their own care endure preventable illness and unnecessary suffering, and resources are wasted as a result.
Therefore, CFAH has renewed its commitment to conduct research that documents patients’ growing responsibilities. Last week at an event hosted at the National Press Club, CFAH announced findings from the Snapshot of People’s Engagement in Their Health Care research report. The report provides baseline evidence on the number of Americans who are competently engaged in their care. At the same time, CFAH announced a free online resource for patients and their caregivers. The website offers resources and information to help people find and use decent health care. For more information visit: www.cfah.org. “CFAH and its new Fellows are able to provide a strong and credible voice to the patient-advocacy community because of the breadth and depth of their collective research,” said Douglas Kamerow, MD, MPH, Chief Scientist, Health Services and Policy Research, RTI International, and Chair of the CFAH Board of Trustees. “Health care policymakers should take note: right now, patients and their caregivers have to do a lot to benefit optimally from their health care, and there is a lot to lose if they don’t.”
ABOUT THE FELLOWS:Carol Alter, MD is the Director of Policy and Community Outreach and an Associate Professor in the Georgetown University Department of Psychiatry. She most recently founded and currently directs a policy-action organization, Treatment Effectiveness Now, which is focusing on issues of access to care for patients with co-occurring mental and physical disorders.
Connie Davis, MN, ARNP is a geriatric nurse practitioner and health care consultant, currently serving as the quality improvement lead for a program to promote partnerships in patient care in British Columbia. She devotes her time to efforts that improve the partnership between patients and health care professionals, concentrating on rural, remote and underserved populations.
Kate Lorig, RN, DrPH is the Director of the Stanford Patient Education Research Center and Professor of Medicine in the Stanford School of Medicine. She has spent more than two decades developing and evaluating community-based patient education programs in English and Spanish for people with chronic conditions, and most recently, she’s done the same for programs offered online.
Judith Hibbard, PhD, MPH is a Professor of Health Policy at the University of Oregon and the lead author of the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) that measures an individual’s knowledge and skill for self-management.
Molly Mettler, MSW is the Senior Vice President for Healthwise, where she advocates for a transformation in the role of the health care consumer from a passive recipient to one who’s stronger, more active and involved in his or her own care.
Dale Shaller, MPA is principal of Shaller Consulting, a health policy analysis and management consulting practice based in Stillwater, Minnesota. He has directed the National CAHPS Benchmarking Database since its inception in 1998 and is a co-author of The CAHPS Improvement Guide.
Joshua J. Seidman, PhD is the founder and former president of the Center for Information Therapy. At the IxCenter, Dr. Seidman focused on stimulating innovation, diffusing best practices, and evangelizing for a patient-centered orientation to implementation of HIT applications.
David S. Sobel, MD, MPH is director of Patient Education and Health Promotion for The Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Region. Dr. Sobel practices primary care with Kaiser Permanente and was the physician lead for the national initiative in Patient-Centered Care for the Care Management Institute of Kaiser Permanente.
Shoshanna Sofaer, MPH, DrPH is the Robert P. Luciano Professor of Health Care Policy at the School of Public Affairs, Baruch College. She is nationally known for her expertise in qualitative and mixed methods research and consults and trains widely on these issues and is frequently requested to speak to health care stakeholders about her research and experience.
For more information about the Center for Advancing Health Fellows and to read their complete biographies, please visit: http://www.cfah.org/about/fellows.cfm.
About the Center for Advancing Health (CFAH)Since 1992, CFAH has conducted research, communicated findings and advocated for policies that support everyone's ability to benefit from advances in health science. CFAH is an independent non-profit organization that is supported by a number of foundations (principally the Annenberg Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation) and individuals. For additional information visit: www.cfah.org.
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