Press Room

If you’re looking for an expert resource in the areas of:

• How common preventable medical errors occur and ways to prevent them
• Working with medical professionals to ensure a loved one’s safety
• Up-to-date news and developments in patient safety
• Tools, products and resources for patient advocates
• How the Oct. 1, 2008 changes in Medicare reimbursement policies to hospitals affect care

More ways Karen Curtiss and campaignZERØ™ can help the media:

• If you need articles, columns, blurbs, or sound bytes
• Freelance articles for print and online publications; can provide engaging copy in a timely manner
• Can interview on a wide variety of subjects involving patient advocacy and prevention of medical error

Current articles:

Coming Soon!

Bio:

Karen Aydt Curtiss is a business writer specializing in corporate global social responsibility. Her most recent assignments have been for Abbott Laboratories, a Fortune 100 healthcare company with significant philanthropic commitments in Africa and other underdeveloped nations.

Earlier this year, Karen founded campaignZERØ™ to provide patients and their advocates with strategies and tools to zero out medical error. In October 2009, campaignZERØ™ launched an iPhone application to help prevent medication errors: DoubleCheck Rx™. (The Blackberry and Android versions are coming soon.)

Karen served as President of Strategic Research Corporation for 25 years. The company specialized in customer satisfaction in business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets for Fortune 500 organizations such as A.T. Kearney (then EDS), Amoco (then BP), Ameritech (then SBC), Baxter Healthcare, Bristol Myers, Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Shell Energy, Unilever, Standard & Poor’s and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, among others.

Before launching her research consultancy practice at age 27, Karen was an account executive with NFO Research, a leading global market research firm, managing the Sears, Kraft Foods and Quaker accounts. She began her career at another top firm, Market Facts (now Synovate Research), in its Public Sector Research Group where she analyzed studies for the Centers for Disease Control and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Karen founded and co-chairs The HealthReach Foundation with State Sen. Susan Garrett of the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee. The foundation provides funding and other resources to support free clinics in Northern Illinois, which serve uninsured children and adults who have no other access to medical and dental care, and prescription drugs.

Throughout her professional career, Karen has maintained ongoing commitments to non-profits, many in healthcare. The HealthReach Foundation was inspired by the organizations she has served over the years:

• Children’s Memorial Hospital, 9 years, patient volunteer
• The Jr. League of Chicago, 5 years, fundraising and PR
• Chicago Children’s Museum, 2 years, fundraising and PR
• The Infant Welfare Society of Chicago, 7 years, fundraising and PR

Karen lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago with her husband. Sandy, and their two sons, William, 11, and Alex, 15. She treasures her close relationships to daughters by marriage and their husbands, Molly Baxter (John) of Greenwich, CT and Katie Johnson (Bob), Henderson, NV. The entire family spends as much time as they can together – usually sailing on the closest body of water.