Access to Health

Rebecca J. Donatelle is a teacher and mentor for undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Public Health at Oregon State University. Although her main emphasis is in the area of Public Health Promotion and Health Education, she teaches a wide range of students from many disciplines on the Oregon State campus. Donatelle is an Associate Professor in Public Health and is the Coordinator of Public Health Promotion and Education Programs in the College of Health and Human Sciences. She has a Ph.D. in Community Health/Health Education, a Master of Science degree in Health Education, and a Bachelor of Science degree with majors in both Health/Physical Education and English. She is also a Certified Health Education Specialist.

Among the courses that she teaches are Principles of Health Behaviors, Stress and Health, Violence and Public Health, Epidemiology and Control of Chronic Diseases, and Introduction to Human Disease (Communicable). Recently, she has developed a new course on Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Donatelle is an active researcher in the area of health behaviors, and she has been the principal investigator on a number of randomized, controlled trials focusing on motivating behavior change, the use of social support facilitating behavior change, and the use of community supports to assist individuals in changing high-risk behaviors. Currently, she is working with pregnant women who smoke in an effort to get them to reduce or stop smoking during pregnancy and beyond. She has also conducted extensive research in the area of decision making and factors influencing the use of alternative and traditional health care providers for treatment of low back pain; illness and sick role behaviors; women's decisions about treatment for breast cancer and cardiac rehabilitation; and stress in health and disease.

Donatelle has received the Leadership Award, an Outstanding Teacher Award, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Presidential Award for Promising New Research in the Smoke-Free Families National Initiative. She has been an active member of several state and national committees and task forces and continues to work to reduce risk for high-risk populations, particularly women and older adults. In addition to Access to Health, Donatelle is the author of Health: The Basics, Fitness for Health, and AIDS and STIs in a Global Society, and she has written several chapters and manuscripts for various health-related books and journals.