New American Psychological Association CEO to speak on racial and ethnic health issues, meet students and community April 29-30

New American Psychological Association CEO to speak on racial and ethnic health issues, meet students and community April 29-30April 22, 2003Michael P. Careympcarey@syr.edu

Norman Anderson, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Psychological Association (APA), will deliver the inaugural Health and Behavior Lecture April 29 at 7 p.m. in Syracuse University’s Maxwell Auditorium. His lecture, “Unraveling the Mystery of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities: Who, What, When, Where, How and Especially Why?” will be followed by a question and answer session with the audience.

On April 30 at 9 a.m., Anderson will take part in a town hall meeting with local psychologists regarding pressing issues facing the discipline. At 1 p.m., he will preside over the Department of Psychology’s 10th Annual Scientific Poster Sessions and Awards Ceremony. Both April 30 events will be held in the Schine Student Center.

All events are free and open to the public. In addition, Anderson will hold a series of informal meetings with students, faculty and community leaders.

“We are very honored to have Dr. Anderson visit our campus, deliver the inaugural Health and Behavior Lecture, and meet with students, faculty, staff and other members of our community,” says Michael Carey, director of the Center for Health and Behavior, which is sponsoring Anderson’s visit. “Norman Anderson has provided outstanding leadership at the National Institutes of Health and has been a visionary spokesperson regarding the effects of race, poverty and behavior on health. His appointment as CEO of the APA recognizes the important role of behavioral science on public policy, health care delivery and practice. We are very pleased that Norman has chosen SU as one of his first campus visits after assuming his leadership responsibilities at the APA.”

Trained as a clinical psychologist and a scientist, Anderson has dedicated his professional life to studying the relationships between health and behavior, and health and race. His priorities at APA include expanding the role of psychologists in the nation’s healthcare system, the workplace and education.

Prior to joining APA, Anderson served as a professor at Duke and Harvard universities, where his interests centered on health disparities and mass media approaches to public health. He was the former associate director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the first director of the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. At NIH, he was charged with facilitating behavioral and social sciences research across all of the 24 Institutes and Centers of the NIH. His leadership benefited behavioral and social research on cancer, heart disease, diabetes, aging, HIV/AIDS, and mental health as well as other health conditions and diseases.

Anderson is a past president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and is currently the president of the board of directors for filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s STARBRIGHT Foundation. He is also on the Advisory Committee for Public Issues for the Advertising Council, on the Advisory Council for the National Institute on Drug Abuse at NIH, and chairs the National Academy of Science’s Panel on the Future of Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Health in Later Life.

He is Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming “Encyclopedia of Health and Behavior” (Sage, 2004). In addition, Anderson and his wife, health and fitness writer P. Elizabeth Anderson, have co-authored a book for lay audiences entitled, “Emotional Longevity: What Really Determines How Long You Live” (Viking, 2003).

About the Center for Health and Behavior

The Center for Health and Behavior is a unit of The College of Arts and Sciences that supports faculty who investigate the influence of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes on health and disease. Center faculty have received external support to develop and evaluate programs designed to promote health, to prevent disease, and to cope with illness. Current Center projects explore behavioral contributors to heart disease, alcohol use, HIV/AIDS, asthma and arthritis as well as investigating the effects of aging on cognitive processes. For more information, call the Center for Health and Behavior at 443-4093.