Donna E. Howard Dr.PH.
Associate Professor
College Park , MD 20742
Education:
- Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, 1994
- M.P.H. in International/Cross-Cultural Health, University of Hawaii School of Public Health, 1980
- B.S. in Community Nutrition, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1978
Biography:
Dr. Howard received her doctorate in Public Health from the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1994. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Minority Health Research in Baltimore, Maryland. Howard also holds a B.S. in Human Nutrition from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a M.P.H. from the University of Hawaii in Manoa, where her area of concentration was International Health and Cross-Cultural Health. In the Fall 1998, Howard joined the Department of Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is currently an Associate Professor. Currently, she is an investigator in the Laboratory for Health Behavior Assessment and Intervention and collaborator in the Seat Pleasant -University of Maryland Partnership for Health.
Dr. Howard has a strong interest in community-based health education programs and has worked internationally and nationally in pursuit of community empowerment goals . In 1980, she traveled to Southeast Asia to study the integration of nutrition education programs into the primary healthcare program in Bali, Indonesia. More recently, Howard lived and worked in Grenada, West Indies for two years coordinating community health education and nutrition programs for the Grenada Food and Nutrition Council.
Research Interests:
- Adolescent risk and protective health behavior
- Minority Health
- Community and dating violence
- Resilience
- Psychosocial contributors to health behavior
- Ethical issues in the conduct of risk research
Research in Progress:
- The psychosocial and behavioral correlates of adolescent exposures to community and date violence.
- The relationship between urban African American perceptions of social capital, parental monitoring practices, and adolescent risk behavior.
- Adolescent preventive health research at a crossroad: Issues of study integrity, ethics, and imminent harm in the context of adolescent self disclosure of risky behaviors and affective states.
- Association of parental monitoring and teen sexual intentions and behavior.
- An exploration of the relationship of spirituality/religiosity to addiction and treatment outcomes in pregnant substance abusers.