Jessica Fishman

Jessica Fishman, Ph.D., is the Director of the Message Effects Lab and a behavioral scientist with a joint appointment at the Perelman School of Medicine and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. The Message Effects Lab provides scientific consultation on evidence-based behavior change strategies to other researchers and nonprofit organizations, such as the World Bank, plus domestic and foreign governments. The Lab conducts empirical tests to identify effective behavior change strategies and message content. For over two decades, she has received support from the National Institutes of Health. Through ongoing research collaborations and as Co-Director of the Outcomes Measurement and Methods Core within the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award, Dr. Fishman has worked with interdisciplinary research teams across six schools of the University of Pennsylvania. She is a fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics. Her book, Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead (NYU Press, 2017), is the winner of two awards. She earned a doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of arts (with university honors and departmental distinction) from Stanford University.