Meet Our Patient Engagement Advisory Committee
In July, we profiled six members of the Choosing Wisely Patient Engagement Advisory Committee, a distinguished group of patient advocates recently assembled to advise the campaign on how best to continue educating and engaging patients, caregivers and others about overuse in health care. Here are brief bios of the remaining four committee members.
Susan Perez, MPH, PhD is a researcher who focuses on understanding consumers’ decision-making processes in order to develop health care policies, information, and resources to promote high-value choices. Dr. Perez has conducted studies that classified approaches to processing internet health information among vulnerable populations; addressed statewide overuse of health care services; identified approaches for patients and providers to discuss the cost of care; developed a statewide campaign to address variation in C-section rates by working with both patients and hospitals; and illuminated consumers’ views of cost sharing, quality and network choice. Prior to her appointment as an assistant professor at California State University, Sacramento, Dr. Perez completed a postdoctoral fellowship in quality, safety, and comparative effectiveness research and earned a doctorate in Nursing Science and Health-Care Leadership at the University of California, Davis.
Beccah Rothschild, MPA is an independent consultant focusing on patient engagement, health communication and health literacy, and health care culture change. Prior to her consultancy, she was the Senior Outreach Leader for the Choosing Wisely campaign at Consumer Reports. In that role she was responsible for leading the consumer-facing component of the campaign and providing resources for health care consumers and providers so that they could engage in important conversations about the potential overuse and misuse of medical tests and treatments. Previously, Rothschild was the director of health literacy projects at Health Research for Action, a center in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She also has managed the California Health Literacy Initiative, the first statewide health literacy initiative, and served as the family literacy coordinator at the Second Start Adult Literacy Program in Oakland. She has worked for more than 20 years in the fields of patient engagement, health literacy, and health communication in numerous capacities, including direct service, plain language writing, research, policy, project management, and interventions.
Denise Octavia Smith is the projects manager for the Health Disparities Institute, leading the development and implementation of its health and public policy research agenda and statewide coalition with a specific focus on community engaged research. In this role, Smith leads the development of the Equal Coverage to Care Coalition, comprised of state agencies, nonprofits, foundations, advocates and direct service providers who seek to increase community capacity to understand and use health insurance to access benefits, protections and services and simplify health insurance so that all Connecticut residents can achieve well-being. Her prior roles include director of Career and Education Initiatives for Central Area Health Education Center, Inc. and training coordinator for Access Health CT, where she developed the statewide training, certification, consumer engagement strategies and continuing education opportunities for 400 culturally and linguistically diverse navigators, in-person assisters and certified application counselors during Connecticut’s first open enrollment. Her current advisory appointments include the University of Pennsylvania PCORI-funded “Governance of Learning Healthcare Systems” project, Connecticut State Innovation Model Consumer Advisory Board, and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Multicultural Advisory Council. Smith is a 2016 Universal Health Care Foundation “Leaders in Action” Fellow.
Janice Tufte is an engaged patient partner in health systems improvement, and receives care at Kaiser Washington. She has participated in more than six Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded projects, from conference involvement to Patient Co-Investigator, and is involved with measurement and guidelines, adding the patient/public perspective to subject matter. She has been a member of a collaborative effort addressing Low Value Care and Research and serves on an Advisory Panel for that topic.
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