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H. Shonna Yin, M.D., M.S. (RWJ)
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
New York University School of Medicine
YINH02@nyumc.org

H. Shonna Yin, M.D., M.Sc. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the NYU School of Medicine/ Bellevue Hospital Center.  Dr. Yin is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Rochester School of Medicine.  She completed residency training in Pediatrics at the NYU School of Medicine, and received her Masters of Science degree in Clinical Investigation through the CDC-sponsored Medicine and Public Health Research Fellowship Program at the NYU School of Medicine.

Dr. Yin’s research interest centers on the issue of health literacy and its implications for child health.  Her current work focuses on the development and evaluation of low literacy strategies to prevent parent medication administration errors.  Dr. Yin’s Physician Faculty Scholars Program project, entitled “Dissemination of a Health Literacy Intervention to Enhance Provider Communication of Medication Instructions and Decrease Outpatient Pediatric Medication Errors” will evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of a novel health literacy intervention as it is implemented in the pediatric emergency room setting for use by providers.  The technology-based intervention is designed to facilitate accurate dosing and adherence by directly addressing the communication needs of caregivers with low health literacy, and includes patient- and medication-specific, bilingual, plain language, pictogram-based medication instruction and log sheets, as well as use of teachback. The intervention was found to be efficacious in a recent randomized controlled trial, and will be featured in a soon to be published book by the Joint Commission.  The project objectives align with recent national initiatives to move toward a standard, integrated system of prescription information for patients and families that can be utilized across literacy levels and languages.

Dr. Yin serves on a CDC workgroup on “Preventing Unsupervised Medication Ingestions and Overdoses in Children,” and co-chairs a subcommittee focused on the standardization of pediatric medication dosing instructions. 

Dr. Yin is co-PI of a newly awarded four site NIH R01 to develop and test a low literacy and numeracy-focused intervention for early childhood obesity prevention.  She was the recipient of the 2009 Academic Pediatric Association Young Investigator Award as well as the 2007 Pfizer Fellowship in Health Literacy / Clear Health Communication.  She has also received grant funding from the United Hospital Fund.

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