Associate Director
Dr. Beth St. Jean is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies (https://ischool.umd.edu/), the Associate Director of the Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC) (http://ipac.umd.edu/), and an affiliate faculty member of the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy (http://sph.umd.edu/center/hchl) at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA (https://www.umd.edu/). Dr. St. Jean holds a PhD in Information and a Master’s degree in Information (Library & Information Services specialization) from the University of Michigan School of Information. Dr. St. Jean’s research aims to improve people’s long-term health outlooks by exploring the important interrelationships between their health-related information behaviors, their health literacy, their health-related self-efficacy, and their health behaviors. She has worked with both adults and children over the past several years. Working with her colleague, Mega Subramaniam, Dr. St. Jean co-developed and conducted the NLM-funded HackHealth after-school program (http://hackhealth.umd.edu/) to help improve disadvantaged middle school students’ health-related self-efficacy and their digital health literacy skills. Dr. St. Jean’s most current research focuses on the concept of consumer health information justice (CHIJ), particularly aiming to identify the information-related causes of, and potential information-related solution pathways to, health disparities. Dr. St. Jean is currently working with her colleague, Dr. Ursula Gorham, writing a new textbook introducing Information Science undergraduate students to information behavior. Additionally, she is working with Dr. Paul Jaeger and doctoral candidates Gagan Jindal and Yuting Liao, guest editing a volume of the book series Advances in Librarianship entitled “Roles and Responsibilities of Libraries in Increasing Consumer Health Literacy & Reducing Health Disparities.”
