Staff: Jennifer Taber, PhD
Jennifer Taber, PhD
Fellow - Cancer Research Training Award
- Office of the Associate Director (OAD)
- Behavioral Research Program (BRP)
Dr. Jennifer Taber was a Cancer Research Training Award (CRTA) Fellow in the Office of the Associate Director in the Behavioral Research Program (BRP). She earned her doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Utah and received a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from American University.
Broadly, Jennifer is interested in determining how to design effective interventions and health communications in order to increase health behavior performance. While at the University of Utah, Jennifer was involved in research assessing the behavioral and psychological outcomes of genetic testing for familial melanoma risk. She helped to design a study of melanoma genetic testing and counseling aimed at understanding the multiple cognitive and psychological mechanisms underlying outcomes of testing. Jennifer is also interested in understanding how to most effectively use health communications to reduce ambivalence (simultaneous positive and negative attitudes) about healthy behaviors in order to increase their performance. For her dissertation work, she conducted an experimental study testing an intervention to improve healthy eating by targeting the perceived taste of healthy food.
During her postdoctoral fellowship, Jennifer worked with William Klein on multiple projects related to health communications, risk perceptions, cancer screening, and genetic/genomic testing.
She starting working as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kent State University in January 2016.
Current and/or past BRP mentors include William Klein and Rebecca Ferrer.
To request edits to this profile, please contact us at ncidccpsbrpadvances@mail.nih.gov.