Matthew Kreuter is a leading national public health expert in the field of health communication. His research focuses on eliminating health disparities by finding effective ways to reach and engage people on health matters, particularly members of low-income and marginalized communities. He has developed and evaluated a wide range of communication programs designed to promote health and wellness by encouraging behavior change while taking into consideration the social and environmental contexts that shape people’s decisions and actions.
Kreuter is the founding director of the Health Communication Research Laboratory, which aims to eliminate health disparities by increasing the reach and effectiveness of health information to underserved populations. He has served on the National Academy of Medicine’s Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice. His work has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Nursing Research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
In August, Americans made nearly a million calls for help to the 211 emergency resources helpline, according to 211 Counts, a national tracking system in 36 states developed by the Brown School’s Health Communication Research Laboratory.
iHeard St. Louis, a program run by the Health Communication Research Laboratory at the Brown School, is expanding its health misinformation response system to four new states plus Washington, D.C.
Matthew Kreuter, the Kahn Family Professor of Public Health at the Brown School, has received $1.9 million in grants to help increase COVID-19 vaccinations among the Black community in St. Louis City and County.
Moving scientific research results into public health and patient care more quickly could have a significant impact on health equity, finds a new paper from researchers at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
In the first week since COVID-19 was designated a pandemic, requests for food pantries skyrocketed across the United States. Requests for home-delivered meals more than tripled in the same time period, said a Brown School researcher who tracks calls to the national 2-1-1 helpline.
The Brown School’s Health Communication Research Laboratory (HCRL) at Washington University in St. Louis has received a five-year, $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute to study ways to help low-income smokers quit smoking through specialized quitlines and helping with basic needs.
Each year, more than 16 million people in the U.S. dial 2-1-1 for help with both emergency services requests and basic needs. The Brown’s School’s 2-1-1 Counts is the first tool to provide real-time, searchable and visual presentations of data from call centers across the nation.
