Deborah Cornman
Dr. Cornman is the Associate Director of CHIP and a researcher in health behavior change. She has spent her career studying the dynamics of health behavior, and developing and evaluating theory-based behavior change interventions in the areas of medication adherence, sexual health, HIV/STI prevention, and gender-based violence prevention. She recently started the first eHealth/mHealth research group at the University of Connecticut (UConn), which is comprised of 119 researchers from UConn and other institutions who are interested in the use of mobile devices, social media, web-based interventions, sensors and other types of technology to assess and modify health behavior. In terms of her own research in this area, she played a key role in the development of an effective computer-based adherence promotion intervention for people living with HIV, created a web-based training program for infectious disease providers, and is currently working on the design of a smartphone app to help prevent binge eating among college students and a second app to support treatment adherence for those with depression. In addition to her work in the U.S., Dr. Cornman had conducted research in Ethiopia, India, Mozambique, South Africa, and Uganda; she is currently the PI on a DoD/DHAPP-funded country-wide project in Mozambique. She has trained hundreds of healthcare providers and peer educators worldwide, has numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, has written a variety of training manuals and has given many presentations about her research.