New Project Manager to Helm Alliance's Health Literacy Efforts

As part of our commitment to ensuring our members and recipients can access, understand and use information to make health decisions, Alliance Health has brought onboard a health literacy project manager.

Meghan Watkins, who joined Alliance in December 2022, will assist in efforts to improve organizational health literacy and manage the development, implementation and evaluation of health literacy quality improvement initiatives. This will include a formal health literacy review process in which Alliance staff can submit materials for review and recommendations. She will also pilot the creation of trainings to help Alliance staff learn the fundamentals of health literacy and why it is so important to our work.

“The use of plain language to convey accurate health information is a key component to improved community health outcomes,” Watkins said. “The healthcare industry is complex, and it shouldn’t take a graduate degree to understand your healthcare benefits and coverage. By using health literacy best practices Alliance can help ensure the populations they serve receive materials that help them take action to improve their health and in turn their lives.”

Before joining Alliance, Watkins worked at Health Literacy Media, a health communications nonprofit based out of St. Louis, MO, where she wrote and edited materials and worked closely with clients across disciplines to create health literate materials and programs.

After graduate school, Watkins completed a health communication fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in the Surveillance Research Program. During her time there, she worked to present cancer data to the public in a variety of formats including print, video and social media. Before this, she worked in non-profit development and as a respite caregiver, which helped her find her passion for advocacy and learn how she can use her voice to improve the lives of others.

Watkins holds a master’s of public health in health behavior and health education, with a specialization in health communication, from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor’s degree in health science from University of Missouri – Columbia. She also holds specialist certifications in health education and health literacy.