About

Linda Neuhauser is a Clinical Professor of Community Health Sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and serves as Co-Principal Investigator at the Health Research for Action center. Her research and teaching focus on transdisciplinary, translational, and participatory approaches aimed at improving large-scale health interventions and policies. She has developed new participatory models and methods, with applied work spanning statewide early childhood programs, oral health initiatives, projects designed by factory workers in China, community-wide asthma prevention and treatment, and statewide poison control education. She has a special interest in the collaborative design and evaluation of mass communication that addresses people's literacy, language, cultural, access, and other needs. Linda Neuhauser is recognized as an international leader in health literacy and clear communication, advising US federal agencies such as DHHS, CDC, and FDA, as well as international transdisciplinary collaboratives and private industry. Her research interests include translational and transdisciplinary research, interventions theory, design sciences, health communication, health literacy, parenting education, oral health, community asthma interventions, environmental health, poison control, patient and community engagement, and issues related to nutrition, food security, and hunger.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Medical education
• Engineering
• Process management
• Data science
• Business
• Knowledge management
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Nursing
• Family medicine
• Management science

Selected publications

• Mapping the Urban and Rural Divide in Deaf & Disability‐Accessible Climate Risk Communication Methods in California's Offices of Emergency Services

  Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management · 2025-08-20

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT Due to geography, structural, and economic factors, California has been the site of multiple climate crises. Deaf and disabled Californians face especially high health risks in crises, partly due to inaccessible risk communications before, during, and after disasters. California's Offices of Emergency Services (OES) play an important role in ensuring inclusive emergency communication for disabled people. This study examines accessibility of climate‐related risk communications in California's OES for deaf and disabled people and is intended to provide guidance to the cities, counties, and the state to improve risk communication plans for disabled people. Key informants from county ( n = 44) and city ( n = 13) OES offices were surveyed about whether their OES provided accessible emergency communications, had barriers, and had needs to improve accessible communications. Findings reveal that urban OES offices more frequently report using or being aware of accessible communication strategies, while rural offices face challenges due to limited resources and infrastructure. Rural OES have fewer partnerships with deaf‐serving organizations and are less likely to have resources to provide captioning and American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters, compared to urban OES. The study highlights the need for improved training, resource allocation, and policy integration to address accessible communication gaps, especially in rural areas. Recommendations include increased training and funding for rural OES offices, stronger partnerships with disability advocacy groups, and the adoption of universal design principles in climate risk communications. This would ensure that all Californians—regardless of location or ability—receive the information they need to prepare for and respond to climate disasters.

  PublisherDOI

• Assessing the Use of an Oral Health Literacy Toolkit in Three California Dental Practices: A Mixed-Methods Feasibility Study

  Journal of the California Dental Association · 2025-08-04

  articleOpen access

  Background This study evaluates the California Oral Health Literacy Toolkit for enhancing patient and oral health care provider communication in California dental offices. Only 1 in 10 adults in the U.S. fully understands written health materials. This study examines communication between providers and patients and documents the challenges and successes of implementing the toolkit.Methods This study was conducted at three California dental practices. Methods included nine key informant interviews, an online survey to assess oral health literacy (OHL) capacity and readiness, field observations, and a review of practice informational materials to examine communication and the implementation of the toolkit.Results The three main successes of toolkit implementation were its adoption by the dental clinics, the identification of OHL leaders/teams, and the use of the teach-back method as a communication strategy. Challenges included the time required to implement the toolkit, staff turnover, and difficulty aligning educational materials with patients’ literacy levels.Conclusions The toolkit aims to improve communication between oral health care providers and patients, creating a better practice environment. This study found that the toolkit helped providers create a more patient-centered environment and use clear communication techniques, including teach-back. This suggests that the toolkit can help advance oral health literacy and health equity. It also identified ways to minimize barriers and improve the toolkit.Practical Implications The study provides insights into effective strategies and barriers for implementing the toolkit, which can inform future efforts to improve oral health literacy in dental practices.

  PublisherDOI

• A scoping review of wildfire smoke risk communications: issues, gaps, and recommendations

  BMC Public Health · 2024-01-27 · 30 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  BACKGROUND: Wildfire smoke exposure has become a growing public health concern, as megafires and fires at the wildland urban interface increase in incidence and severity. Smoke contains many pollutants that negatively impact health and is linked to a number of health complications and chronic diseases. Communicating effectively with the public, especially at-risk populations, to reduce their exposure to this environmental pollutant has become a public health priority. Although wildfire smoke risk communication research has also increased in the past decade, best practice guidance is limited, and most health communications do not adhere to health literacy principles: readability, accessibility, and actionability. This scoping review identifies peer-reviewed studies about wildfire smoke risk communications to identify gaps in research and evaluation of communications and programs that seek to educate the public. METHODS: Four hundred fifty-one articles were identified from Web of Science and PubMed databases. After screening, 21 articles were included in the final sample for the abstraction process and qualitative thematic analysis. Ten articles were based in the US, with the other half in Australia, Canada, Italy, and other countries. Fifteen articles examined communication materials and messaging recommendations. Eight papers described communication delivery strategies. Eleven articles discussed behavior change. Six articles touched on risk communications for vulnerable populations; findings were limited and called for increasing awareness and prioritizing risk communications for at-risk populations. RESULTS: This scoping review found limited studies describing behavior change to reduce wildfire smoke exposure, characteristics of effective communication materials and messaging, and communication delivery strategies. Literature on risk communications, dissemination, and behavior change for vulnerable populations was even more limited. CONCLUSIONS: Recommendations include providing risk communications that are easy-to-understand and adapted to specific needs of at-risk groups. Communications should provide a limited number of messages that include specific actions for avoiding smoke exposure. Effective communications should use mixed media formats and a wide variety of dissemination strategies. There is a pressing need for more intervention research and effectiveness evaluation of risk communications about wildfire smoke exposure, and more development and dissemination of risk communications for both the general public and vulnerable populations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Streamlining regulatory review in a multicenter platform trial: Opportunity to enhance patient centered care and drive innovation and efficiency.

  Journal of Clinical Oncology · 2023-06-01 · 1 citations

  review

  1572 Background: In addition to being required by the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects for United States-based institutions that receive federal funding and are engaged in cooperative research projects, the use of a central Institutional Review Board (cIRB) has multiple benefits. Yet more advanced trial designs have unique needs and challenges that may hinder adoption of an efficient cIRB. Platform trials, which require both a master protocol and successive individual protocol amendments for each new agent, are prone to high regulatory burden that can slow trial recruitment, representing a significant workload for study personnel. Specific challenges for platform trials include high burden of new amendments and IRB review schedules staggered across sites, making it challenging to have all sites operating under the same amendment concurrently. Methods: Administrative assessments were collected over the course of the I-SPY2 trial. The primary outcome of interest was time from amendment submission to approval (calculated as the number of days from submission to the local IRB by the site investigators to approval by the local IRB). Quantitative data in terms of hours spent on regulatory tasks pre- and post-cIRB implementation was estimated. Site investigators were asked in December 2022 to complete a brief questionnaire to investigate perceptions on changes to workload and level of comfort using a cIRB. Results: Amendments were activated when 50% of high accruing sites had IRB approval. The number of sites with approval for an amendment to go live was < 25% prior to cIRB adoption, and 83% after. Following transition to the cIRB in February 2021, the mean time from amendment submission to approval decreased from 54.4 to 20.7 days by Jan 2023. Changes to the informed consent were possible once the cIRB was adopted, including: standardizing site-specific IRB language in a section of the consent, so it need not be adjusted with every new agent amendment; standardizing site-specific workflows; shortening consent and making it more patient friendly. The average time that CRCs spent on regulatory work at each site decreased by an average of 160 minutes, but was variable, revealing continued use of local IRB, other committees at some sites. A total of 14 respondents completed the survey; most respondents indicated that keeping up with the amendment approval process was easier post-cIRB and 94% were comfortable relying on a cIRB. The short time for cIRB approval revealed the inefficiency of other processes, including coverage analysis and building of drug order sets. Conclusions: Active engagement of cIRB leadership and IRB working group has enabled regulatory review that now takes less than 30 days. The cIRB is now the standard for the I-SPY family of trials. Other services can also be shared and will continue to drive efficiency and reduce the regulatory burden for sites.

  PublisherDOI

• Program Design and Evaluation

  The International Encyclopedia of Health Communication · 2022-09-29 · 1 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This entry provides an overview of issues, theories, and methods relevant to integrating program design and evaluation of health communication, and newer trends in this area. Theories/models and methods from many disciplines provide rich guidance in this area, including those from social sciences, humanities, biomedical sciences, sociotechnical sciences, business, and others. Traditional health communication programs have tended to be expert‐driven, focused on individual behavior, and evaluated using mixed social science methods. Newer approaches are more trans/interdisciplinary, more focused on community and societal conditions, more interactive, and more strongly engage end users and stakeholders in iterative program co‐design and co‐evaluation.

  PublisherDOI

• California Oral Health Literacy Toolkit

  Journal of the California Dental Association · 2021-09-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsLinda NeuhauserLinda Neuhauser, DrPH, MPH, is a clinical professor of community health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health and co-principal investigator of Health Research for Action.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Anthony EleftherionAnthony Eleftherion, is the director of communications at Health Research for Action.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Rebecca FreedRebecca Freed is the associate director, health literacy communications at Health Research for Action.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Karen Sokal-GutierrezKaren Sokal-Gutierrez, MD, MPH, is a clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Rosanna JacksonRosanna Jackson is an oral health program manager at the Office of Oral Health in the California Department of Public Health.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Jessica LiuJessica Liu, MPH, is the research project coordinator at Health Research for Action.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Susan L. IveySusan L. Ivey, MD, MHSA, is a professor adjunct at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health and the director of research at Health Research for Action.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Kristin HoeftKristin Hoeft, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the department of preventive and restorative dental sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Dentistry.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Alice M. HorowitzAlice M. Horowitz, RDH, MA, PhD, is an associate research professor in the department of behavioral health and community health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.Jayanth KumarJayanth Kumar, DDS, MPH, is the state dental director for the California Department of Public Health.Conflict of Interest Disclosure for all authors: None reported.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Promoting Convergence Between Health Literacy and Health Communication

  Studies in health technology and informatics · 2020-01-01 · 9 citations

  article

  Health communication and health literacy are complementary areas of study and application. However, the important connections between the work conducted in these two related areas of inquiry do not appear to have always been well understood, nor appreciated, leading to limited integration and coordination between health communication and health literacy inquiry. Part of the problem may be that these two related areas developed from different professional trajectories, with health communication developing primarily from a social science orientation, and health literacy emerging primarily from a health professional application perspective. While health literacy grew out of the professional disciplines of medicine and education, health communication was undergirded by communication and social science research. Due to these different initial starting points, a lack of understanding has grown between these two areas of inquiry, resulting in a lack of appreciation for how well these fields fit together and how they can be mutually supportive in both research and applications. While there are many scholars who study both health communication and health literacy, some researchers are not well-versed in both areas, and do not understand how they can contribute to one another. In this chapter, the authors examine the parallel development of these two interdependent areas of study, trace their inter-connections, and propose strategies to enhance collaboration and integration within health literacy as well as health communication research and applications.

  PublisherDOI

• Re-thinking failure

  2020-09-08

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter describes problems with the traditional view of failure in scientific inquiry and intervention development; the evolution of scientific inquiry, including the value of transdisciplinarity as a unifying approach; how methods of participatory design – especially design-thinking – leverage failure; and example cases using iterative design and initial failures to achieve success. Scholars have identified many reasons why traditional research theory and methods do not align well with understanding or addressing complex problems, and one of these reasons is a lack of attention to failure. In addition to the biological, psychological and societal pressures to avoid dealing with failure, the foundation of scientific inquiry and changes to it over time help explain the origin of traditional research approaches and why the importance of failure has been overlooked until more recently. The scientific approach reflects both perceptions of reality and also ways of seeking knowledge to understand it.

  PublisherDOI

• Expertise in research integration and implementation for tackling complex problems: when is it needed, where can it be found and how can it be strengthened?

  Palgrave Communications · 2020 · 205 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract Expertise in research integration and implementation is an essential but often overlooked component of tackling complex societal and environmental problems. We focus on expertise relevant to any complex problem, especially contributory expertise, divided into ‘knowing-that’ and ‘knowing-how.’ We also deal with interactional expertise and the fact that much expertise is tacit. We explore three questions. First, in examining ‘when is expertise in research integration and implementation required?,’ we review tasks essential (a) to developing more comprehensive understandings of complex problems, plus possible ways to address them, and (b) for supporting implementation of those understandings into government policy, community practice, business and social innovation, or other initiatives. Second, in considering ‘where can expertise in research integration and implementation currently be found?,’ we describe three realms: (a) specific approaches, including interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, systems thinking and sustainability science; (b) case-based experience that is independent of these specific approaches; and (c) research examining elements of integration and implementation, specifically considering unknowns and fostering innovation. We highlight examples of expertise in each realm and demonstrate how fragmentation currently precludes clear identification of research integration and implementation expertise. Third, in exploring ‘what is required to strengthen expertise in research integration and implementation?,’ we propose building a knowledge bank. We delve into three key challenges: compiling existing expertise, indexing and organising the expertise to make it widely accessible, and understanding and overcoming the core reasons for the existing fragmentation. A growing knowledge bank of expertise in research integration and implementation on the one hand, and accumulating success in addressing complex societal and environmental problems on the other, will form a virtuous cycle so that each strengthens the other. Building a coalition of researchers and institutions will ensure this expertise and its application are valued and sustained.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Barriers and Facilitators to Promoting Oral Health Literacy and Patient Communication among Dental Providers in California

  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2020 · 42 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Medical education
  • Family medicine

  Studies demonstrate that dental providers value effective provider-patient communication but use few recommended communication techniques. This study explored perspectives of California dental providers and oral health literacy experts in the United States on use of communication techniques. We conducted a qualitative key informant interview study with 50 participants between November 2019 and March 2020, including 44 dental providers (dentists, hygienists, and assistants) in public or private practice in California and 6 oral health literacy (OHL) experts. We undertook thematic analysis of interview transcripts and descriptive statistics about interviewees from pre-surveys. Dental providers reported frequently speaking slowly, and using simple language and models/radiographs to communicate with patients, while infrequently using interpretation/translation, illustrations, teach-back, or motivational interviewing. Providers reported using only 6 of the 18 American Medical Association's (AMA) recommended communication techniques and only 3 of the 7 AMA's basic communication techniques. A majority of providers indicated using one of five oral health assessment and educational strategies. Key barriers to effective communication included limited time, financial incentives promoting treatment over prevention, lack of OHL training, limited plain-language patient education materials, and patients with low OHL knowledge. Dental organizations should prioritize supporting dental providers in effective patient communication practices. Standardizing OHL continuing education, creating an evidence-based OHL toolkit for dental teams, ensuring accessible interpretation/translation services, and incentivizing dental providers to deliver education could improve oral health literacy and outcomes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Susan L. Ivey

  Research for Action

  32 shared

• Gary L. Kreps

  20 shared

• Winston Tseng

  University of California, Berkeley

  15 shared

• Carrie Graham

  Center for Health Care Strategies

  7 shared

• Alina Engelman

  7 shared

• Barbara LeStage

  6 shared

• Karen Sokal‐Gutierrez

  6 shared

• Christian Pohl

  5 shared