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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Brian Southwell, Ph.D., a senior research scientist in the Center for Communication Science and director of the Science in the Public Sphere Program at RTI International, has been appointed to serve on the editorial board of the American Journal of Health Promotion.
The American Journal of Health Promotion is the largest and oldest peer-reviewed publication devoted exclusively to health promotion. The journal focuses on the science of lifestyle change and provides a forum for exchange among multiple disciplines involved in health promotion. The journal aims to reduce the gap between health promotion research and practice through public service, meetings and publications.
"I'm honored to join the editorial board of the American Journal of Health Promotion," Southwell said. "AJHP has been innovative in efforts to ensure that published research is read by more than university faculty and has attempted to engage a wide range of practitioners and members of the general public through webinars with article authors and other creative events."
Southwell currently serves on a number of other journal editorial boards as well and this latest appointment further highlights the connections between RTI research and academic forums.
As an editorial board member, he will review a series of papers each year for the journal and contribute to discussions concerning the future direction of the journal.
Southwell's own research has been multifaceted, including large-scale evaluation work related to cancer prevention and screening promotion efforts, national campaigns to discourage substance use, efforts to improve television news coverage of science, and various state-level campaigns.
His research and theoretical contributions appear in more than 70 journal articles and chapters. In 2013, Johns Hopkins University Press and RTI Press co-published Southwell's book, Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health. The book was recently reviewed in Science.
Southwell is an adjunct professor at Duke University, where he is involved with the Duke University Energy Initiative to promote innovation in energy consumption and delivery. Since 2011, he has also served as a research professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and an adjunct associate professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Southwell holds a Ph.D. and master's degree in communication from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia.
