The Center for Health Behavior and Communication Research

The Center for Health Behavior and Communication Research seeks to develop theory-based, culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate strategies to reduce health-risk behaviors. The Center evaluates intervention strategies using rigorous methodologies including randomized controlled trials and identifies social psychological factors that underlie behaviors that create health risks.

With a special focus on HIV risk reduction, the Center disseminates evidence-based HIV risk-reduction and health-promotion curricula in various settings, including clinics, schools and community-based organizations. It identifies effective ways to implement HIV risk-reduction and health-promotion interventions with diverse communities in order to improve health outcomes and inform public health policy.

Latest Information

Jemmott Profiled in Philadelphia Daily News

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Penn researchers John B. Jemmott III, director of the Center for Health Behavior and Communication Research of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Loretta Sweet Jemmott, a professor at Penn Nursing, were profiled in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Daily News in recognition of their innovative HIV/AIDS prevention work in South Africa. For five years, the husband-and-wife research team has been working with more than 1,000 sixth-grade students in South Africa’s Mdantsane Township to devise a comprehensive sex education curriculum to help stem the spread of AIDS in that area. 

 Learn More

Jemmott awarded $4 million NIH grant to develop AIDS prevention program among South African men

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $4 million to John B. Jemmott III, director of the Center for Health Behavior and Communication Research at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, to conduct a five-year study of appropriate interventions among South African men to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

The NIH grant will mean that Jemmott and his Penn team will continue their work in Mdantsane Township, the second largest black township in South Africa. For the past five years, Jemmott has been working with youth there, developing a health curriculum designed to stem the spread of AIDS.

 Learn More