Vish Viswanath, PhD, Director

Photo of Dr Vish ViswanathIn addition to being the director of HCC, Dr. Viswanath is a Professor of Health Communication in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a faculty member in the Center for Community-Based Research (CCBR) at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He also chairs the Steering Committee for the Health Communication Concentration at the Chan School.

Dr. Viswanath's primary research is in documenting the relationship between communication inequalities, poverty, and health disparities. He has written more than 150 journal articles and book chapters concerning communication inequalities and health disparities, public health communication campaigns, e-health and the digital divide, as well as public health preparedness and the delivery of health communication interventions to underserved populations. He also is the co-editor of three books.

Before coming to Boston, Dr. Viswanath was an associate director of the Behavioral Research Program and a senior communication scientist at the National Cancer Institute. While there, he provided national leadership in the development and implementation of a nationally representative survey of the American public's use of cancer-related information (HINTS). He has an extensive portfolio of extramurally funded research in cancer communications, research dissemination/knowledge transfer, and public health emergency preparedness. To learn more, please visit the Viswanath Lab website.