Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH, Appointed to Advisory Council for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute

The Council advises the HHS Secretary, the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Director of the National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute on matters relating to the cause, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of heart, blood vessel, lung and blood diseases; the use of blood and blood products and the management of blood resources; and on sleep disorders. The Council also considers applications for research and research training grants and cooperative agreements and recommends funding for those applications that show promise of making valuable contributions to human knowledge and health improvement. The Council may also make recommendations to the Director, NHLBI, respecting research conducted at the Institute. The Council meets four times a year--winter, spring, and two meetings in the fall.

About Dr. GlanzDr. Glanz’s research in community and health care settings focuses on healthy eating, obesity prevention, cancer prevention and control, chronic disease management and control, reducing health disparities, and health communication technologies. Her research about understanding, measuring, and improving healthy food environments has been widely recognized and replicated.

Glanz has published more than 440 journal articles and book chapters. Over the past 15 years, she has received more than $40 million in research funding. Current studies range from a Centers for Disease Control (CDC)-funded examination of media communication strategies for reducing ultraviolet exposure to prevent skin cancer to an NIH-funded study of the impact of healthy food marketing in supermarkets and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded evaluation of the impacts of the New Jersey Food Financing Initiative.

The University of Pennsylvania recruited Glanz, who holds dual appointments in medicine and nursing, as a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor in 2009. PIK professorships bring in eminent scholars whose work draws from multiple academic disciplines and whose achievements demonstrate a rare ability to thrive at the intersection of multiple fields.

Glanz and her colleagues founded the UPenn Prevention Research Center, which serves as a catalyst for interdisciplinary research in chronic disease prevention and for advancing prevention research. Launched in 2014 with a $4.35 million grant from the CDC, it’s one of 26 Prevention Research Centers nationwide, and has received more than $ 4 million in supplementary research funding. Glanz and Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, direct the center, through which faculty from medicine, business, and other fields, and researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, collaborate on research in cancer prevention, weight loss, the economic impact of clinical trials, and other areas. Glanz is also director of Penn’s Center for Health Behavior Research, which facilitates collaboration on health behavior research, and advancing measurement of health behaviors and the use of health behavior theory. It is part of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Glanz is an elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly named Institute of Medicine), and a Fellow in the Society for Behavioral Medicine. Her work and research has been honored with many awards including the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award from the James and Sarah Fries Foundation, and a bronze award in the ‘Best Practices in Distance Learning Program’ from the US Distance Learning Association. Glanz received her PhD, Master of Public Health, and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

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Editor’s Note: A high-resolution head shot of Dr. Glanz is available for publication. Please contact Ed Federico.

About the University of Pennsylvania School of NursingThe University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing is one of the world’s leading schools of nursing, is consistently ranked as one of the top graduate nursing schools in the United States, and is among the nation’s top recipients of nursing research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Penn Nursing prepares nurse scientists and nurse leaders to meet the health needs of a global society through research, education, and practice. Follow Penn Nursing on: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram & YouTube.