Dr. Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr. Armstrong is also the Program Leader of the Cancer Control and Outcomes Program at the Abramson Cancer Center. Dr. Armstrong is the past recipient of a Preventive Oncology Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute, a Clinical Research Training Grant from the American Cancer Society, a Young Investigator Award from the Department of Defense and a Generalist Faculty Scholar Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In recent years, she has received the Robert C. Witt Research Award for the best paper published by the American Risk and Insurance Association, the Outstanding Lecturer Award from the School of Medicine class of 2004, the Leonard Berwick Memorial Teaching Award, the 2004 Society of General Internal Medicine Outstanding Junior Investigator of the Year Award and the 2005 Alice Hersh Young Investigator Award from AcademyHealth.

Dr. Armstrong’s research seeks to elucidate the complex relationship among the social environment, health care, and cancer outcomes. Her research has concentrated on several areas of critical policy importance including genetic testing for cancer susceptibility and racial disparities in cancer outcomes. She holds an NCI R01 investigating the contribution of quality of treatment to racial disparities in endometrial cancer survival, an NHGRI R01 assessing strategies to minimize racial disparities in uptake of genetic testing for cancer susceptibility, and a Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society to determine the impact of distrust of the health care system on cancer screening and prevention behaviors among minority groups in the US. Dr. Armstrong is PI of a project in the recently awarded NCI P50 Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, which investigates the contribution of racial residential segregation to racial differences in prostate cancer outcomes. In addition, Dr. Armstrong is PI of an NCI R21 to explore cultural models of cancer prevention among African-American women and a Robert Wood Johnson Faculty Scholar Award to evaluate the use of individualized breast cancer risk information. She is a co-investigator on the Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research Project “Public Information Seeking and Scanning Behaviors and Their Relationship To Cancer Prevention, Screening And Post-Diagnosis Behaviors” (Hornik PI) and involved in the training and mentoring of post-doctoral fellows in the CECCR. Her research findings have been published in many highly respected journals, including JAMA, the Journal of Clinical Oncology and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Joseph N. Cappella (PhD, 1974, Michigan State University) is Professor of Communication and holds the Gerald R. Miller Chair at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is directing one of the research projects in the CECCR, entitled “Framing Genetic Risk,” and co-directs the Fellows program with Sandy Schwartz, MD. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the University of Arizona. He has lectured at more than 25 different universities including Duke, Harvard, University of Southern California, University of Washington, Seoul National University and Ohio State University.

Dr. Cappella’s research has produced more than 90 articles and book chapters and three co-authored books focusing on political communication, health, social interaction, media effects and statistical methods. The articles have appeared in journals in psychology, communication, health and politics. Book credits include Spiral of Cynicism (Oxford), Multivariate Techniques in Human Communication Research (Academic), and Sequence and Pattern in Communicative Behavior (Arnold). He has edited special issues of Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Communication Theory and Journal of Communication. His research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Science Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, The Twentieth Century Fund, and from the Markle, Ford, Carnegie, Pew, and Robert Wood Johnson foundations. He has served on the editorial boards of 15 different journals including Communication Monographs, Social Psychology Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Personal and Social Relationships, Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Human Communication Research and Communication Theory. He is an elected member of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology and a member of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is designated as a “Distinguished Scholar” by the National Communication Association, is a Fellow of the International Communication Association, a past president of ICA, and recipient of the B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award. He is known on occasion to cook a mean pasta putanesca.

Martin Fishbein became the Harry C. Coles Jr. Distinguished Professor in Communication and Director of the Health Communication Program in the Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He is also the Director of the Theory and Methods Core of the EPIC Center.

Dr. Fishbein received his B.A. from Reed College in 1957 and his PhD (in Psychology) from UCLA in 1961. From 1961 to 1997 he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was Professor of Psychology and Research Professor, Institute of Communications Research. Developer of the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Integrative Model, Professor Fishbein has consulted for a number of profit and nonprofit organizations including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Federal Trade Commission, the British Home Office, Warner Communications, Inc., Traffic Safety Now, Inc., and the International Congress of Symphony and Opera Musicians. He has served on the NIMH Mental Health AIDS Research Review Committee, the NIMH AIDS Policy Subcommittee of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, and has been a special consultant on behavior and behavior change for the NIMH AIDS research program. He has also been a guest researcher in the Behavioral Prevention Research Branch in the Division of HIV/STD Prevention in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and he served as Acting Chief of the Behavioral Interventions and Research Branch of the Division of STD Prevention, in the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention at the CDC. Additionally, he has served on committees for the National Academy of Science and the Institute of Medicine. He has contributed over 250 articles and chapters to professional books and journals, and has authored or edited six books. He has been president of both the Society for Consumer Psychology (Division 23 of the APA) and the Interamerican Psychological Society, and he serves on the International Board for AIDS Impact.

Jessica Fishman, PhD, is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania and a NIH-NIA National Research Service Award Fellow. She was awarded her doctorate by the Annenberg School for Communication in communication theory and research. Fishman’s research focuses on mass media and interpersonal communication about death, dying and end of life issues. She also studies communication in relation to socio-cultural inequalities, including health disparities. She received a CECCR pilot grant to examine how African American targeted mass media and “mainstream” media report on cancer treatments and subsequent survival or mortality.

Taressa Fraze is currently a research director at the Center for Excellence in Cancer Communication Research. She received her PhD from the University of Kentucky, College of Communications and Information Sciences in 2006. Dr. Fraze’s previous research has centered on effective message design. She has primarily worked in the contexts of drug abuse prevention, physician/patient skills training, and with sexual assault victims. Dr. Fraze has worked on grants funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Stacy Gray MD, AM is a post doctoral fellow at the Center for Cancer Communication Research at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gray completed her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at the University of Chicago with a clinical emphasis on lung cancer and cancer risk evaluation in high risk populations. Dr. Gray completed a masters program at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and is interested in the intersection of public policy and medicine. Dr. Gray's research interests include population level cancer communications, direct-to-consumer marketing of medical technologies, physician-patient communication and the impact of conflicts of interest on clinical care and bio-medical research.

Michael Hennessy received his PhD from Northwestern University and his MPH from the School of Public Health, Emory University. He worked in academic (University of Hawaii, Emory University), profit (Abt Associates, Inc., Pacific Gas and Electric Company), non-profit (Prevention Research Center, Berkeley CA), and governmental (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) positions before he came to Annenberg in 1999. His area is quantitative methods and evaluation research and he has over seventy publications in this area. His special interest is the application of structural equation model (SEM) methodology to estimate the effects of theory-based interventions. In the CECCR project, he works with Dr. Marty Fishbein in the Theory and Methods Core.

Robert Hornik is Wilbur Schramm Professor of Communication and Health Policy at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. His PhD is from Stanford University in communication theory and research. Dr. Hornik is currently the Director of the University of Pennsylvania's NCI-funded Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research. Previously he was co-principal investigator and scientific director for the evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and had led efforts to design or evaluate more than 25 large-scale public health communication and education programs. These projects include evaluations of national AIDS education programs in developing countries, and of communication for child survival programs in ten developing countries, and evaluations of two anti-domestic violence prevention interventions in the United States. He is author of the book Development Communication, co-author of Toward Reform of Program Evaluation and Educational Reform with Television: El Salvador Experience and is the editor of Public Health Communication: Evidence for Behavior Change. Dr. Hornik has served as a member of four National Academy of Science/Institute of Medicine committees, has won the Andreasen Scholar award in social marketing, and the Fisher Mentorship award from the International Communication Association.

Chanita Hughes-Halbert, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Faculty Associate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hughes-Halbert’s research focuses on the identification of sociocultural, environmental and psychological determinants of disparities in cancer outcomes among African Americans and translation of this knowledge into interventions designed to improve cancer and control behaviors in this population. Her research in the CECCR focuses on understanding psychological and behavioral reactions to media messages about race and genetic risk factors for smoking among African Americans. The results of this study have contributed to our understanding of trust in healthcare providers, attitudes about genetic testing for smoking susceptibility, beliefs about tobacco use and intentions to participate in genetics research among African Americans.

Christopher Jepson, , is a Biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC). Dr. Jepson has a background in social cognition and 22 years of research experience in health behavior, with a focus on cancer prevention. He has served as Principal Investigator on a project examining determinants of repeat adherence to mammography, and as Co-Investigator on a project studying racial differences in breast cancer screening knowledge and behavior among urban public school teachers.

Amy Leader recently joined the EPIC Center in September 2005 as a Research Director. Ms. Leader received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She received a master’s degree in public health from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (GWU SPHHS), where she is currently completing her doctorate in public health with a focus on cancer prevention and control. Ms. Leader spent four years at the DC Department of Health in Washington, D.C. as Data Manager for the DC Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. Ms. Leader has conducted research with the Department of Prevention and Community Health at GWU SPHHS and the Applied Cancer Screening Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Lerman is Mary W. Calkins Professor in both the Department of Psychiatry and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the Associate Director for Cancer Control and Population Science at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she is the Director of the NIH-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania and is Principal Investigator for studies examining the role of genetic factors in response to pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation. Dr. Lerman is also Co-Director of the Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research and Principal Investigator for studies to evaluate anti-tobacco PSAs. Dr. Lerman is a former member of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Board of Scientific Advisors and the National Human Genome Research Institute Advisory Panel on the ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications) Program. She has been the recipient of the Society of Behavioral Medicine New Investigator Award (1989), the American Psychological Association Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology (1995), and the Joseph Cullen Award for Tobacco Research from the American Society of Preventative Oncology (2004). Recently, she co-chaired the NCI Tobacco Research Implementation Group that produced recommendations for tobacco research priorities for the next 5-10 years. Dr. Lerman has published more than 185 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Nguyen is a clinical instructor of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. His research interest is in cancer control and health disparities in Asian immigrant populations, with a focus on cancer communication in communities with limited English proficiency. He has extensive experience working with community-based organizations and health outreach programs for the medically underserved. He is fluent in Vietnamese and has partnered with several local and regional organizations to address the health education needs of Asian communities. In 2005, he was awarded a Cancer Control Center Development Award for Primary Care Physicians from the American Cancer Society. Dr Nguyen works with Information Seeking and Scanning research group at the CECCR and is the recipient of a CECCR pilot grant to investigate cancer information sources used by older Vietnamese immigrants in Philadelphia.

Aaron Smith-McLallen, PhD, is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Theory and Methods Core of the Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in social psychology at the University of Connecticut in 2005. Dr. Smith-McLallen’s research interests involve understanding the cognitive processes that underlie implicit and deliberate information processing tasks. Some of his research examines the impact of various message characteristics (e.g., likelihood, desirability, complexity) on judgments of argument strength and on attitude change. In part, this line of research involves evaluating and constructing messages intended to increase a variety of cancer preventative behaviors. Research involving automatic cognitive responding has been in the areas of health and racial prejudice.

Andrew A. Strasser, PhD, is Research Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC). Dr. Strasser completed his PhD in Biobehavioral Health (2002) from the Pennsylvania State University, focusing on individual differences in smoking harm and behavior, including assessment of smoking topography (a quantified measure of how people smoke, that includes puff volume and velocity). In 2002, he was recruited as a post-doctoral fellow at the Penn TTURC, where he conducts research seeking to understand the psychophysiological and biobehavioral basis of nicotine addiction, and the mechanisms of effectiveness of pharmacotherapies for tobacco dependence. Current research includes testing the effects of switching to new low nicotine cigarettes and potentially reduced exposure products (PREPs) on smoking topography and carcinogen exposure. In addition, he collaborates with Penn’s Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research on experimental analysis of the effectiveness of anti-tobacco advertisements.