Stephanie Staras

I am a Population Health Scientist.

Stephanie Staras, M.S.P.H., Ph.D.

University of Florida

The moment when my first-born got his first set of vaccines - I got it. I had just caused my sweet son, whom I had been trying around-the-clock to keep from crying, to make a blood-curdling cry. It hit me - parents who are hesitant about vaccines are just scared. My logical brain said the shots were the best thing to protect my child, but my maternal-self screamed no. At that moment, I knew more must be done to help parents understand the importance of vaccines.

Stephanie Staras, MSPH, PhD, is committed to using implementation science strategies to prevent disease, especially human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers and associated disparities. Her research focuses on the synergistic role of parents and providers in increasing HPV vaccination rates. Her current project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-level intervention with two implementation strategies (brief provider training and parent-targeted interactive text message reminders) on HPV vaccination rates among 11- to 12-year-old boys and girls. Her study considers the independent and synergistic effects of two different recommendation approaches - mentioning HPV as one of the needed adolescent vaccines or emphasizing benefits of the HPV vaccine. The strategies and evaluation of concordant recommendation approaches across provider- and parent-levels has the potential to lead the field closer to a sustainable, scalable, and efficacious approach to decreasing HPV-related cancer rates.

Always having a passion for health equity, in college she participated in a summer internship as a statistical intern for a coordinating center for a university-affiliated large clinical trial. That summer, she gained a love for research, as she had an opportunity to write an IRB proposal, observe the IRB review, implement a small study, audit clinical research charts, and perform simple statistical analyses with software. Her love for implementation science grew later when she developed an effective intervention tool that very few people used. She is dedicated to bringing cutting-edge research findings to all patients – currently, this means helping doctors talk to parents about the HPV vaccine and helping parents prevent cancer in their children.


Grant Listing
Project Title Grant Number Program Director Publication(s)
Text and Talk: A multi-level intervention to increase provider HPV vaccine recommendation effectiveness
1R01CA234030-01A1
Sarah Kobrin


To request edits to this profile, please contact Mark Alexander at alexandm@mail.nih.gov.

Last Updated: 09/20/2019 03:14:04