Dr. Deborah Cohen
Dr. Deborah Cohen (MD, University of Pennsylvania; MPH, UCLA; BA, Yale) is a researcher in the area of the built environment and health, and is the co-author of Prescription for a Healthy Nation, A new approach to improving our lives by fixing our everyday world, published by Beacon Press. She is Board Certified in Public Health and Preventive Medicine and currently a Senior Natural Scientist at the RAND Corporation. She previously served on the faculty at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and at the University of Southern California Medical School. Most recently her research studies have been focused in on the role of the built environment in physical activity and dietary behaviors, but she has also done extensive work in STD/HIV control and alcohol policy. She has served on several advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Brazil. She is the Principal Investigator of several grants to assess how local neighborhoods influence physical activity and dietary behaviors. These include a study to assess the influence of environmental and community factors on the likelihood that adolescent girls engage in physical activity, a study to determine whether improvements in the quality or accessibility of parks and recreational facilities result in increases in physical activity among children and adults; and a study to assess how strongly alcohol and food intake is associated with local availability of consumer products.
