Laura Linnan has more than 25 years of experience as a public health practitioner and researcher who works to eliminate chronic disease disparities with multi-level interventions designed and delivered in collaboration with the intended beneficiaries of these programs, policies or environmental supports. She is a professor in the Department of Health Behavior, founding director of the Carolina Collaborative for Research on Work and Health (CCRWH), and serves as the Senior Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs for the Gillings School. 

Dr. Linnan’s applied intervention research aims to prevent and control chronic diseases such as cancer, CVD/stroke, diabetes and arthritis. She is on the scientific advisory board for the University of Washington Prevention Research Center, and on two Centers for Excellence in Workforce Health (Harvard and Iowa).  She has served on a variety of science advisory panels at CDC, NIOSH, ACS and NIH. Her multi-disciplinary research teams include students and community collaborators who apply community-based participatory research principles to plan, deliver and evaluate interventions that take place in worksites, colleges/universities, beauty and barbershops, childcare centers, churches, public libraries and other community settings. She also designs and applies innovative, mixed method designs, as well as rigorous process and outcome evaluations.

In her capacity as Senior Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs, Linnan is leading a team of faculty and students who are re-designing and implementing an integrated Gillings MPH core curriculum – a 12-credit, 2-semester training program for all MPH/MSPH terminal degree students at Gillings – and an online version of the School's MPH training program. She was instrumental in developing the current Health Behavior Master of Public Health training program and taught the program planning and capstone courses.

Research Activities

Cancer
Cardiovascular disease
Health behavior
Health communication
Minority health
Obesity
Occupational health
Women's health

Key Publications

Assessing opportunities to enhance comprehensive health promotion and wellness programming in a state community college system. Linnan LA, Arandia G, Naseer C, Li Jiang, Pomerantz M, Diehl  North Carolina Medical Journal (in press).

Measures of organizational characteristics associated with the adoption and/or implementation of innovations: A systematic review. Allen, J., Towne, S., Maxwell, A., Leyva, B., DiMartino, L., Bowen, D., Linnan, L., Weiner, B.  BMC Health Services (in press).

Using the PRECEDE planning approach to develop a physical activity intervention for African American men who visit barbershops: Results from the FITShop study. Hood, S., Linnan, L., Muqueeth, S., Hall, M., Robinson, S., Jolly, D.  (2014). J Men’s Health, June.

Health promotion research in beauty salons and barbershops: A synthesis of the literature. Linnan, L., D’Angelo, H., Harrington, C. (2014). Am J Prev Medicine, 47(1), 77-85.

Headache and health-related job loss among disadvantaged women. Kneipp, S., Beeber, L., Linnan, L.  (2014). J Nurse Practitioner, 10(5), 316-324.

Education

ScD, Public Health, Harvard University, 1999

MSEd, Public Health, University of Toledo, 1983

BS, Health Education, Indiana State University, 1981