John Philip Allegrante | |
---|---|
Born | March 8, 1952 Poughkeepsie, New York, United States |
Occupation | University Professor |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | State University of New York at Cortland (B.S.), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M.S., Ph.D.) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Teachers College and the Mailman School of Public Health,Columbia University |
Main interests | Applied Behavioral and Social Sciences •Education •Health Promotion •Public Health |
John Philip Allegrante (born March 8,1952) is an American applied behavioral scientist and academic. He is the Charles Irwin Lambert Professor of Health Behavior and Education at Teachers College,the graduate school of education,health,and psychology at Columbia University,where he has been a member of the faculty since 1979. [1]
Allegrante was born at Poughkeepsie,New York,the son of John Ralph and Lois Elaine Allegrante,and grew up in Salt Point,a hamlet of Dutchess County,in New York's Hudson Valley.
He began his education in a one-room schoolhouse in Salt Point and later attended elementary,middle and high schools in the Hyde Park Central School District,graduating from Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in 1970. A first-generation college student,he initially attended a local community college and then went on to earn a B.S. degree in education with distinction from the State University of New York College at Cortland in 1974. [2]
Following graduation from Cortland,he enrolled for graduate study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was funded as a graduate research and teaching assistant from 1974 to 1979,earning a M.S. degree in health education in 1976 and Ph.D. in health education and sociology in 1979. [3] During his studies,Allegrante's father became seriously ill and the family ordeal of the cost of his father's hospitalization led him to write an essay about the impact of the high costs of medical care that was published on The New York Times Op-Ed page in April 1977. [4] President Jimmy Carter read his essay and invited Allegrante to the White House where he met with Dr. Peter Bourne,then the special assistant to the President for health affairs,to discuss the dilemmas that working-class Americans face in paying medical bills. Allegrante has written about the experience,noting that it had an indelible impact on him and shaped his research interests in patient education and advocacy efforts for decades to come. [5]
His dissertation research,“Explaining Safety Helmet Use by Motorcycle Operators Using a Behavioral Intention Model,” [6] which was subsequently published, [7] was conducted under the guidance of the human factors psychologist Rudolf G. Mortimer and explored the social-psychological factors that influence voluntary helmet use. The eminent social psychologist,Martin Fishbein,whose theory he was testing,was a member of his doctoral committee. Allegrante has said that the tensions inherent in balancing private right with public good that were at the core of individual decisions to wear a helmet constitute an enduring dilemma of American democracy,and remain an underlying theme of many public health challenges, [8] including those that came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic,such as wearing a mask,physically distancing,and accepting vaccination—all of which were among the initial public health directives that require changes in behavior. [9]
Allegrante was admitted to a post-doctoral U.S. Public Health Service Traineeship at the Harvard School of Public Health following the completion of his doctorate. [10] He was at Harvard about to begin his studies in the summer of 1979 when he was offered an assistant professorship at Teachers College,Columbia University. Forgoing the postdoctoral fellowship,he moved to New York and joined the faculty of the college in September of that year,becoming chairman of the Department of Health Education at the age of 28. He was promoted to associate professor in 1981,earned tenure shortly thereafter,and was subsequently promoted to full professor in 1993. Allegrante was named the inaugural Charles Irwin Lambert Professor of Health Behavior and Education in 2022. [11] He holds joint faculty appointments in the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Mailman School of Public Health. [12]
In 1987,during a year long sabbatical leave from Columbia,Allegrante was a Pew Policy Career Development Fellow at the RAND/UCLA Center for Health Policy Study,where he studied with several RAND Health Insurance Experiment investigators. Following RAND,he began a 10-year research appointment as the chief behavioral scientist and educator in the NIH-funded Cornell Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery. His most notable contribution is the study of supervised fitness walking that he,his doctoral student Pamela Kovar and others conducted with funding support of the Arthritis Foundation. The seminal study,a randomized controlled trial of safety and efficacy,showed that fitness walking was a safe and efficacious non-surgical treatment in people with moderate to severe osteoarthritis of the knees. The findings,which were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1992,established the evidence-base for walking and subsequently changed physician practice. [13] [14]
Beyond his contributions to NIH-funded research in the areas of clinical epidemiology and health services research and behavioral management of chronic diseases,Allegrante has also published widely in the prevention of adolescent substance use prevention and on professional preparation and workforce development in public health education. He has authored or coauthored over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and numerous books and book chapters.
Allegrante has served on numerous advisory and review panels of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies and foundations. He was appointed during the Obama administration to the Board of Scientific Counselors to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control,a federal advisory committee that advises CDC. [15]
Allegrante is a globalist and has been engaged in several international collaborations that focus on understanding and improving human population health. During the mid-1990s,he led delegations of nursing and public health professionals for Health Volunteers Overseas to Vietnam as part of the Clinton Administration's U.S.-Vietnam reconciliation efforts to build capacity in the country's higher education sector. Later,as an Open Society Foundations International Scholar,he was a faculty member in the higher education support program in Central Asia. He worked with the Kazakhstan School of Public Health [16] to strengthen capacity of junior faculty and has written about the public health policy challenges and priorities for Kazakhstan. [17] [18]
In 2005,he was selected to be a Fulbright Specialist in Public/Global Health and later,in 2007,a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Iceland. [19] There,he began a collaboration with Icelandic behavioral and social scientists who are researching the prevalence and prevention of substance use in Iceland and other Nordic and European countries. Allegrante has been collaborating as a senior investigator with a multidisciplinary team of behavioral and social scientists at Reykjavik University,who are studying child and adolescent health in a developmental life course study of the 2004 Icelandic birth cohort. Recent studies by the group,published in The Lancet Psychiatry [20] and the JCCP Advances, [21] have reported on the impact of COVID-19 on adolescent mental health. The research has been supported by grants from the U.S.-Icelandic Fulbright Commission,Icelandic Centre for Research and the European Research Council.
Allegrante has taught as a Fulbright visiting professor at Reykjavik University,where he now holds an Honorary Professorship in the Department of Psychology [22] and as an Erasmus Programme visiting professor in the Europubhealth Programme [23] at the École des Hautes Études en SantéPublique (EHESP French School of Public Health) in Rennes and at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick. He also has taught at Fudan University,Kiel University,and the University of Tokyo. A Fulbright Ambassador emeritus, [24] he is a director and vice-chair of the board of One To World,a non-profit organization that is designated by the U.S. Department of State as the official coordinator of enrichment programs for visiting Fulbright grantees studying in the greater New York area. [25] [26]
He is the co-founder with Ulrich Hoinkes of Kiel University of the Anxiety Culture Project, [27] a joint research project of Kiel University and Teachers College. [28] Allegrante is the principal editor of the forthcoming book,Anxiety Culture:The New Global State of Human Affairs (Johns Hopkins University Press),which is based on the project.
Allegrante became chairman of the Department of Health Education two years after arriving as a junior faculty member at Teachers College and went on to serve as chair of the department and founding director of the Center for Health Promotion throughout the early and mid-1980s. He became director of the larger Division of Health Services,Sciences,and Education in 1989 and served in that position until 1995. He returned to serve as chair of the Department of Health and Behavior Studies from 2007 to 2009 before subsequently serving as Deputy Provost of the college from 2009 to 2013 and as Associate Vice President for International Affairs [29] from 2013 to 2019.
He served as 48th President of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE),1997–98,and was editor of SOPHE's flagship research journal,Health Education &Behavior,from 2011 to 2018. As President of the National Center for Health Education [30] during 2001–05,which was originally incorporated in New York under the Research Council of the Society for Public Health Education,he later oversaw the merger of the center's programs with SOPHE.
Allegrante is married to Andrea Joan (née Samuels) Allegrante. They met as students at Cortland and were married in 1976. [31] They have a son who is married and one grandson.
Meharry Medical College is a private historically black medical school affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Nashville,Tennessee. Founded in 1876 as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College,it was the first medical school for African Americans in the South. While the majority of African Americans lived in the South,they were excluded from many public and private racially segregated institutions of higher education,particularly after the end of Reconstruction.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was an American medical physicist,and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for development of the radioimmunoassay technique. She was the second woman,and the first American-born woman,to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Teachers College,Columbia University (TC) is the graduate school of education of Columbia University,a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887,Teachers College has served as one of the official Faculties and the Department of Education of Columbia University since 1898. It is the oldest and largest graduate school of education in the United States.
Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health,physical health,social health,emotional health,intellectual health,and spiritual health,as well as sexual and reproductive health education. It can also be defined as any combination of learning activities that aim to assist individuals and communities improve their health by expanding knowledge or altering attitudes.
Claude Mason Steele is a social psychologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University,where he is the I. James Quillen Endowed Dean,Emeritus at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education,and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences,Emeritus.
Dorothy Bird Nyswander,was an American health educator. She graduated with masters and bachelor's degrees from the University of Nevada and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California,Berkeley. She is considered the Mother of Health education.
Jessie Gruman was a social psychologist active in the movement to incorporate evidence into health care and to help consumers adopt healthier behaviors. Gruman was the founder and president of the Washington,DC-based Center for Advancing Health from 1992 to 2014. She was the author of the book AfterShock:What to Do When the Doctor Gives You —or Someone You Love —a Devastating Diagnosis. She lived in New York City.
David F. Duncan is president of Duncan &Associates,a firm providing consultation on research design and data collection for behavioral and policy studies. He is also Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health at Brown University School of Medicine.
Lawrence W. Green is an American specialist in public health education. He is best known by health education researchers as the originator of the PRECEDE model and co-developer of the PRECEDE-PROCEED model,which has been used throughout the world to guide health program intervention design,implementation,and evaluation and has led to more than 1000 published studies,applications and commentaries on the model in the professional and scientific literature.
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity,an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus,SARS and COVID-19.
Perry N. Halkitis is an American of Greek ancestry public health psychologist and applied statistician known for his research on the health of LGBT populations with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS,substance use,and mental health. Perry is Dean and Professor of Biostatistics,Health Education,and Behavioral Science at the Rutgers School of Public Health.
Health communication is the study and practice of communicating promotional health information,such as in public health campaigns,health education,and between doctor and patient. The purpose of disseminating health information is to influence personal health choices by improving health literacy. Health communication is a unique niche in healthcare that allows professionals to use communication strategies to inform and influence decisions and actions of the public to improve health.
David W. Orme-Johnson is a former professor of psychology at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield,Iowa. He is the author of over 100 papers investigating the effects of the Transcendental Meditation technique.
The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) is an independent professional society of health educators,academics,and education researchers that was founded in 1950.
Linda P. Fried is an American geriatrician and epidemiologist,who is also the first female Dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Her research career is focused on frailty,healthy aging,and how society can successfully transition to benefit from an aging population.
Thomas J. Coates is the Director of the multi-campus University of California Global Health Institute,a UC-wide initiative established to improve health and reduce the burden of disease throughout the world. He is Professor Emeritus at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and Founding Director of the UCLA Center for World Health,a joint initiative of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UCLA Health,He has conducted extensive research in the realm of HIV and is the Michael and Sue Steinberg Endowed Professor of Global AIDS Research within the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA and Distinguished Professor of Medicine. Health-related behavior is of particular interest to Coates. Throughout his career as a health expert,his theory-based research has been focused on interventions aimed at reducing risks and threats to health
David A. Sleet is an American scientist recognized for championing the application of behavioral science to unintentional injury prevention and helping to establish injury prevention as a global public health concern. He has published hundreds of articles and book chapters and was co-editor of the Handbook of Injury and Violence Prevention.;Injury and Violence Prevention:Behavioral Science Theories;Derryberry’s Educating for Health;and the international prize-winning World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention.
Camara Phyllis Jones is an American physician,epidemiologist,and anti-racism activist who specializes in the effects of racism and social inequalities on health. She is known for her work in defining institutional racism,personally mediated racism,and internalized racism in the context of modern U.S. race relations. During the COVID-19 pandemic,Jones drew attention to why racism and not race is a risk factor and called for actions to address structural racism.
Berta M. Geller is an American research professor emeritus in the department of family medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. She was a long time faculty member in its health promotion office.