Genevieve Dunton, PhD, MPH is a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Psychology at the University of Southern California, and is the Division Chief for the Division of Health Behavior Research (HBR). She earned a doctorate in Health Psychology from the University of California, Irvine and a Master of Public Health from the University of Southern California. Dr. Dunton received post-doctoral training in physical activity, nutrition, and cancer prevention from the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute. The objectives of Dr. Dunton’s research are to understand the etiology of health behaviors related to chronic disease risk in children and adults, with particular focus on physical activity and nutrition. This work is guided by a social-ecological perspective of behavior change, which takes into account the interplay between environmental, social, and individual variables. She has authored over 70 publications and several book chapters on these topics. Dr. Dunton is the Director of the USC REACH (Real-Time Eating Activity and Children?s Health) lab, which includes postdoctoral fellows, pre-doctoral students, masters and undergraduate students, and research staff. The goals of the USC REACH lab are to develop, test, and apply real-time data capture methodologies to better understand the effects of environmental, social, and psychological factors on eating and physical activity.
Many of Dr. Dunton’s projects use smartphones to deliver electronic surveys through Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), measure physical activity and eating, and indicate geographic location as strategies to better understand causes and correlates of health behaviors. She is also running several projects that integrate Bluetooth signals from external sensors such as asthma inhalers, air pollution monitors, and ultraviolet sensors to trigger smartphone-based EMA surveys after specified exposure and events. Dr. Dunton is currently the PI on five large studies (including two R01’s) funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society Project MOBILE, MATCH, AsthEMA, and Mobile Teens which combine EMA and remote sensing technology to study eating and physical activity in children, teens, and parents. Dr. Dunton is also the Chair of the National Physical Activity Plan Public Health Sector Committee.
To Contact: dunton@usc.edu