According to Healthy People 2030, personal health literacy is the degree to which individuals can find, understand, and use information and services to make well-informed decisions regarding their health. Addressing individual challenges related to personal health literacy is key to helping reduce health disparities, achieve health equity, and improve overall public health. Yet, older adults 65 years of age or older disproportionately experience challenges that affect their levels of health literacy, ultimately impacting their ability to age successfully.
 

In this one-hour webinar, Dr. Martin-Hammond will provide an overview of her research that explores the challenges older adults encounter when finding, understanding, and using health information to inform personal health decisions. She will also share her work examining the benefits and barriers of emerging artificially enabled technologies for addressing these challenges, and older adults' perceptions of how these technologies might support them in better accessing and managing care.
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Speaker Bio:
Aqueasha Martin-Hammond is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Clemson University, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Tougaloo College. She conducts research and teaches in Human-Computer Interaction, where she examines the intersection of the areas of aging, health, and intelligent technology design. She employs user-centered and participatory design methodologies to investigate the design of existing and novel intelligent technologies such as conversational assistants and artificially-enabled tools to support aging through improved access to health information and wellness resources at home and in the local community. More broadly, she investigates ways to enhance the usability and accessibility of technologies for older adults across their lifespan and explores the benefits and barriers of adopting these technologies in home and community environments. Her work is funded by Google, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and she is also a recipient of an NSF CAREER award.

NNLM Region 6 Speaker Spotlight Series is an irregular webinar series from the NNLM Region 6, featuring expert guest speakers presenting on topics of interest to all our users, from librarians to public health practitioners, educators, clinicians, and others who work with health information. Topics will be scheduled according to audience interest, seasonal applicability, and speaker availability. For more information, contact Region6-RML@uiowa.edu.