Dean Schillinger

Dean Schillinger is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He is a practicing primary care physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH), a large urban public hospital, where he sees patients, teaches in the primary care residency program, and conducts research as a member of the UCSF Primary Care Research Center. In his administrative capacities, he has directed the Medi-Cal managed care clinic at SFGH, the ambulatory care clinics at SFGH, and has been the Director of Clinical Operations for the Department of Medicine. Dr. Schillinger has focused his research on healthcare for vulnerable populations, including the impact of managed care, improving systems of care for publicly-insured and uninsured patients, and most recently, health communication. His current work has focused on literacy, health communication, and chronic disease management. He has carried out a number of studies exploring the impact of limited health literacy on the care of patients with diabetes and heart disease, and was honored with the 2003 Institute for Healthcare Advancement Research Award for this work. He was recently awarded grants from the California Endowment, the Commonwealth Fund, and the California Health Care Foundation to develop and evaluate disease management programs tailored to the literacy and language needs of diabetes patients at SFGH and is a co-investigator for the National Association of Public Health and Hospital Institute's Diabetes Quality Improvement Consortium. Dr. Schillinger contributed to the 2004 Institute of Medicine Report on Health Literacy and is a member of the American College of Physician's Health Communication Initiative Advisory Board. He is currently an Open Society Institute Advocacy Fellow working with California Literacy, Inc., a non-profit educational organization that helps people gain literacy skills, to advance the California Health Literacy Initiative. Dr. Schillinger is a father of 6-year old twin boys and is married to a legal services attorney who is a Managing Attorney of the Oakland office of Bay Area Legal Aid.