M. Aaron Vrolijk
Founder & Executive Director
Background & Experience:
- MD, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
- Master’s of Science in Chemistry, University of Vermont
- Master of Arts in Cinema Studies, San Francisco State University
- Bachelor of Arts in Visual Studies, California College of the Arts
- Former Resident Physician at Michigan Medicine
- Published researcher on health equity and patient outcomes
- Teaching experience – from UC Berkeley lecturer to medical student mentor
- Research background spanning basic science, clinical medicine, and public health
- Community health volunteer with patient navigation and healthcare access work
Before entering medicine, I experienced firsthand how poor health literacy and miscommunication can be dangerous in healthcare. My only science course from 14 to 28 was on making holograms (I went to art school). My poor health literacy combined with how I express pain as an autistic adult (undiagnosed at that time) contributed to my difficulty in getting care for what turned out to be an infected hernia. It took four emergency room visits before I got an urgent surgery.
This experience isn’t unique. Nearly 9 out of 10 Americans struggle to understand health information, costing our healthcare system up to $238 billion annually. During my medical training, I learned how systemic barriers make effective patient education challenging. Even with the best doctors, most people still need clear materials they can reference at home – just like students need textbooks alongside good teaching. I know that would have helped me better communicate what I was experiencing. Instead, I kept seeking care because I knew something was wrong in my body.
I started my work on improving health literacy, so no one else would have to feel as confused and lost as I did. But the further I got in my training, I began to see how health literacy connects to everything physicians are supposed to uphold—patient autonomy, informed consent, and our fundamental duty to ‘do no harm.’ Poor health education actively undermines these values.
So, I learned how to make a website, read everything I could on health literacy and patient education, and started learning information architecture. My mission stayed the same: to help patients get the care they needed. But I realized my strategy had to change, and that my interdisciplinary background gave me a unique approach to the problem. HealthEd 4 Everyone was born from this.