Alice Horowitz: Giving for Better Health Literacy

he most recent national survey data indicate that the majority of American adults have difficulty applying health information with accuracy and consistency. Health literacy is a shared function of patient skills, effective provider communication and the demand placed on patents by health care systems.

Alice M. Horowitz, a former member of the NIH Committee on Health Literacy and a retired senior scientist at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research at NIH, recently gave the university's new School of Public Health a generous gift that will create the Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy. It will be the nation's only center devoted solely to health literacy located at a university.

Alice Horowitz and President Dan Mote

Named to honor her late husband, who was an internationally recognized dental epidemiologist, the center will be home to the Herschel S. Horowitz Endowed Chair in Health Literacy, which Mrs. Horowitz hopes will "entice a really capable leader who will create an exceptional research agenda that will generate additional funding and contribute to decreasing health disparities by increasing health literacy." Children and their mothers will be of particular focus. Horowitz adds, "My personal belief is everyone should have access to a good education and appropriate health information. It is a social injustice not to do so."