Office of Health Literacy Initiatives
Initiatives, projects and grants participated in and supported by the Office of Health Literacy
Publications and Presentations
Publications
- Exploitive Adolescent Labor and Labor Trafficking: Clinical Perspectives for Adolescent Healthcare Providers
Barral, R., Kelley, M. A., English, A., Raymond-Flesch, M., Chaffee, T., Svetaz, V., Coyne-Beasley, T., & Kanbur, N. Journal of Adolescent Health. - A Mixed Methods Evaluation of a Statewide Narcan Distribution Project: Considerations for Future Implementation of Opioid Overdose Prevention Initiatives
Beeler, S., Golan, O., Call, A., Marino, N., Ghobadi, A., & Monahan, K. BMC Public Health. - Promoting Caring Communities Through Collective Action
Suarez-Balcazar, Y. American Journal of Community Psychology.- Recipient of the 2025 SCRA S. Sarason Award for Community Research and Action.
- Triple Jeopardy: Substance Use, Incarceration, and Low Health Literacy
Beeler, S., Allen-Meares, P., & Slavic, L. Health & Social Work. - Reimagining Food Equity: A Multilevel Health Framework
Kelley, M. A. & Allen-Meares, P. Health & Social Work. - Towards Conversational Assistants for Health Applications: Using ChatGPT to Generate Conversations about Heart Failure
Tayal, A., Salunke, D., Di Eugenio, B., Allen-Meares, P. G., Abril, E. P., Garcia-Bedoya, O., Dickens, C. A., Boyd, A. D. Association for Computational Linguistics: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue. - Social Determinants of Health, Maternal Quality of Life, and Family Functioning Among Latinx Families of Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Zeng, W., Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Errisuriz, V. L., Mirza, M., Vanegas, S. B., Parra-Medina, D., & Magaña, S. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. - Profiles of Structural Violence in Hispanic/Latino Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Parents: the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) Youth Study.
Molina, K., Tan, K., Chen, J., Durazo-Arvizu, R., Gallo, L., Perreira, K., Sanchez-Johnsen, L., Zeng, D., Pulgaron, E, Delamater, A., Kim, S., Allen-Meares, P., Daviglus, M., Isasi, C., & Hernandez, R. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. - PODER Familiar: A Culturally Tailored Health Intervention for Latino Families of Children With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Yu, A. P., Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Errisuriz, V. L., Parra-Medina, D., Mirza, M., Zhang, M., Lee, P. C., Zeng, W., Brown-Hollie, J. P., Yespica Mendoza, E., Brown, S., Vanegas, S. B., Heydarian, N. M., & Magaña, S. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities. - Improving Adolescent and Young Adult Health Through Knowledge and Action on Gender-Based Violence
Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Journal of Adolescent Health. - Using Ecological Systems Theory to Enhance Community Health Literacy
Dickens, C., Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Allen-Meares, P., & Brazil, E. Health Literacy Research and Practice. - A Conceptual Model for Co‐Developing a Culturally Tailored Intervention for Latina Immigrant Caregivers of Children with Disabilities
Suarez‐Balcazar, Y., Yu, A. P.-L., Brown, S., Brown-Hollie, J., Crostley, A., Parra-Medina, D., Saenz, M., Mirza, M., Velasquez, A., Vanegas, S., & Magaña, S. American Journal of Community Psychology. - The Ethical Value of Universal Screening for Food Security Among Adolescents and Young Adults
Kumar, M. M., Argo, T., Svetaz, M. V., Mihaly, L., Kelley, M. A., Galagali, P., Key, J., Raymond-Flesch, M., Karianjahi, R. N., & Kanbur, N. Journal of Adolescent Health. - Promoting Food Security Among Adolescents and Young Adults: A Position Paper of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine
Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Journal of Adolescent Health. - Promoting Health Literacy and Cultural Humility: CBOs and Wraparound Services
Allen-Meares, P., Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Garcia-Bedoya, O., Khare, M., Brazil, E., & Ford, C. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. - Enhancing the Education of Community Health Workers on Health Literacy and Cultural Humility in Times of COVID-19
Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Allen-Meares, P., Dickens, C., Brazil, E., Bedoya-Garcia, O., & Biggers, A. American Journal of Health Education.
Presentations
- Allen-Meares, P., & Slavic, L. (2026, May 12-14). Navigating the Health Information Ecosystem: Lessons for the Future from Community Residents and Stakeholders [Poster Presentation]. IHA Health Literacy Conference.
- Allen-Meares, P., & Slavic, L. (2026, April 17). Navigating the Health Information Ecosystem: Lessons for the Future from Community Residents and Stakeholders [Poster Presentation]. Minority Health Conference.
- Beeler, S., Rains, A., Messmer, S., Elmes, A., Coffee, A., & Wollner, K. (2026, January 15). “[…]it’s like playing Russian roulette”: Perceptions of negative consequences of drug use among a sample of women who use drugs seeking harm reduction services [Symposium Session]. 30th Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), Washington, D.C.
- Tayal, A., Salunke, D., Di Eugenio, B., Allen-Meares, P. G., Abril, E. P., Garcia-Bedoya, O., Dickens, C., & Boyd, A. D. (2025, November 7). Conversational Assistants to support Heart Failure Patients: comparing a NeuroSymbolic Architecture with ChatGPT [Poster presentation]. UIC College of Medicine Research Forum.
- Tayal, A., Salunke, D., Di Eugenio, B., Allen-Meares, P. G., Abril, E. P., Garcia-Bedoya, O., Dickens, C., & Boyd, A. (2025, August 25-27). Towards Conversational Assistants for Health Applications: using ChatGPT to Generate Conversations about Heart Failure [Poster presentation]. SIGDIAL’25 Conference.
- Salunke, D., Tayal, A., Di Eugenio, B., Allen-Meares, P. G., Dickens, C. A., Garcia-Bedoya, O., Abril, E. P., & Boyd, A. D. (2025, May 20-22). Preliminary findings from a comparative study of GPT and neuro-symbolic models in salt content information delivery [Poster presentation]. AMIA 2025 Clinical Informatics Conference, Anaheim, CA, United States.
- Salunke, D. Tayal, A., Di Eugenio, B., Allen-Meares, P.G., Dickens, C.A., Garcia-Bedoya, O., Abril, E.P., & Boyd, A.D. (2025, April 8). Preliminary Findings from A Comparative Study of GPT and Neuro-symbolic Models in Salt Content Information Delivery [Poster Presentation]. UIC 2025 Scholarly Activities Day.
- Tayal, A., Salunke, D., Di Eugenio, B., Allen-Meares, P., Abril, E. P., Garcia, O., Dickens, C., & Boyd, A. (2025, April 15-16) Conversational Assistants to support Heart Failure Patients: comparing a Neurosymbolic Architecture with ChatGPT [Abstract]. Midwest Speech and Language Days (MSLD) 2025.
- Beeler, S. (2025, January 17). Persons Using Drugs Seeking Care at a Mobile Health Van: Preliminary Results on Perceptions of Care Needs and Implications for Future “Street” Research [Oral Presentation]. 29th Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), Seattle, WA.
Initiatives
Targeting COVID, Cancer, and Health Literacy
This project is funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Grant. The timeline is from Jan 2023 – May 2024. Dr. Paula Allen-Meares serves as Co-PI on this grant along with Dr. Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar.
We are working with the IDPH Comprehensive Cancer Control on a project to train community health workers throughout the state of Illinois on the topics of health literacy and cultural competence. Each participant is invited to attend an initial training webinar that is followed a few weeks later with a second webinar that focuses on implementation of the strategies introduced.
Team
The team of faculty who provide the training in heath literacy, health for all, and cultural humility include:
- Dr. Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar
- Dr. Olga Garcia-Bedoya
- Dr. Alana Biggers
- Dr. Carolyn Dickens.
Details of this project
Funding and partnership
This project is funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and has a timeline of Aug 2022 – Aug 2025.
The Office of Health Literacy is partnering with the PI Angela Ellison who is the Executive Director of UIC Office of Community Engagement and Neighborhood Health Partnerships (OCEAN-HP). Dr. Paula Allen-Meares serves as a PI on this grant.
In August 2022, the Office of Health Literacy secured a subaward for The Chicago CHW H.E.R.O. Project. We are working with Angela Ellison, Director of UIC OCEAN-HP and other partners to provide training for community health workers.
The faculty members who provide the training for community health care workers in Cook County include Dr. Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar and Dr. Carolyn Dickens, both experts in cultural humility and health literacy respectively.
A Hybrid Dialogue System Architecture for Symbolic Control of Deep Learning Networks
Team
Allen-Meares serves as Co-PI along with Drs. Andrew Boyd (College of Applied Health Sciences) and Barbara Di Eugenio (College of Engineering) on this artificial intelligence project to develop a dialogue agent targeted at patients with heart failure. We meet bi-weekly to discuss our progress and plan for future steps.
Funding
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant. The timeline is from Aug 2021 – Aug 2025. Initially, they were awarded a campus-wide grant through the UIC Discovery Partners Institute Cycle 1 seed funding program. In 2019, they officially kicked off the research project to investigate the use of technological innovation to address adverse health outcomes for patients with heart failure.
In 2021, they secured funding to begin the development of a ChatBot that can be used to educate patients with heart failure.
Details
Did you know that the Office of Health Literacy has its own bi-weekly radio show which airs on the UIC Radio station? The Dr. Paula Show is streamed online every other Tuesday at 11:00am.
These 15-minute interviews with leading researchers at UIC and elswhere touch upon a variety of topics in the realm of health literacy. See the schedule below for upcoming air dates and guests!
Grants
Advancing Health to Enhance Equitable Community Responses to COVID-19
This program is supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health/Office of Minority Health of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The award totals $3,614,521 with 100% funded by the OASH/OMH/HHS.
The Office of Health Literacy has a sub-contract with the City of Rockford Office of Health and Human Services and in partnership with CURA Strategies for a project to run from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2024. Dr. Paula Allen-Meares serves as a Co-PI for this project.
Team
Members of our team who conduct the training for healthcare professionals and community outreach workers in Rockford include:
- Dr. Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar, Professor and Chair for the Department of Occupational Therapy from the College of Applied Health
- Dr. Olga Garcia-Bedoya, a physician at UI health
- Dr. Manorama Khare, a research professor on the Rockford campus is the member of the team who is tasked with evaluation for the project.
We offer training on health literacy and cultural humility to health care professionals and community health workers who directly serve residents in Rockford.
Also referred to as the CHER grant
Funding
This project is funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) Grant. The original timeline was Sept 2017 – June 2021, but an Administrative Supplement was granted for July 2021 – June 2023. We have applied for a P50 grant to continue this work.
Team
Dr. Paula Allen-Meares serves as a Co-Investigator for this grant. Dr. Martha Daviglus, Executive Director of the UIC Institute for Minority Health Research (IMHR) serves as PI on this grant.
Dr. Allen-Meares on the Investigator Development Core of the U54 CHER grant. She is part of the IDC for this project that has worked on the development of a robust Lunch and Learn series to educate our early stage investigators. A recent presenter was Dr. Preeti Malani, Deputy Editor for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) who conducted a session on scientific communication.
Purpose
The purpose of the center is to investigate how social structures and determinants contribute to adverse health outcomes, and to work toward the elimination of structural violence through collaborative community partnerships, innovative research, and development and growth of researchers, including mentoring of Early Stage Investigators.
Details
Carolyn Dickens, PhD a member of the Health literacy Office, received a grant to address incivility against nurses in hospital settings, which has become an important issue due to burn out among nurses and staffing problems.
Team
Dickens will serve as co-PI with Eileen Knightly, MHA, RN. Other members involved in this grant will be nurse leaders at UI Health and academic partners at the UIC College of Applied Sciences.
Why this work matters
This grant is important because currently there is no research based solutions for violence against nurses and since there is a shortage of nurses leading to high rates of nurse burn out this problem has become even more important. The project BRIDGeS (Building Resourceful Interactions Despite Grief and Stress) aims to improve patient and family interactions with nurses in hospitals.
Details
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities Grant
This was a sub-contract with Cook County Department of Public Health and UIC School of Public Health for which Dr. Paula Allen-Meares served as a PI from 12/29/21 to 5/31/23.
For this project, the Office of Health Literacy partnered with the Cook County Department of Public Health on a $25M project that was funded through the CDC’s National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities. As PI, Dr. Paula Allen-Meares facilitated training sessions for healthcare providers and community health workers throughout Cook County.
Team
The faculty members who served as Co-I’s and presenters on this project include Dr. Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar, Dr. Olga Garcia-Bedoya, Dr. Alana Biggers, and Carolyn Dickens.