Dee Miller recently received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Dissertation Grant for the 2012-2013 academic year, through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program.

Her research project is entitled “Understanding Health Information Needs and Communication Behaviors of Older Adults and their Informal Caregivers to Inform Design for Consumer Health IT Applications.” The purpose of her research is to apply a participatory design methodology called contextual design, to understand older adults, as well as their informal caregivers (family and friends) health information needs and information-sharing behavior as it relates to activities of daily living. This exploratory research represents a first step towards establishing a framework for developing system and users requirements that will inform the design and development process of future consumer health IT applications.