Dr. Vicki Freimuth (Center Director, Principal Investigator)

Dr. Freimuth serves a joint appointment in the Department of Speech Communication and Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia. Dr. Freimuth’s research focuses on the role of communication in health promotion both in the U.S. and in developing countries. She established one of the first graduate programs in health communication at the University of Maryland and was awarded the first annual Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award from both the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association in 1999. In 2004, Dr. Freimuth received the Distinguished Career Award given by the American Public Health Association. She has been the recipient of several research grants including those from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She is the author of Searching for Health Information: The Cancer Information Service Model, and the co-editor of Communication, Language, and Health, and AIDS: Communication Perspectives. She has authored chapters in several major books in health communication and articles in such journals as Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Health Communication, Communication Research, Journal of Communication, American Journal of Public Health, and Health Education Research: Theory and Practice. Dr. Freimuth was the first Associate Director for Communication at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and had the responsibility of building a communication infrastructure throughout the agency and establishing quality health communication programs. The widely-used health communication planning and training CD-Rom, CDCynergy, was developed under her direction at CDC.