Lawrence Wallack

Lawrence Wallack "is Dean, College of Urban and Public Affairs Portland State University. From 1999 – 2004 he was Professor and Director, School of Community Health, Portland State University. He is also Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley and was a founding senior fellow and first President of the Rockridge Institute, a California-based think tank. He is now a senior fellow at the Longview Institute.

"He was the founding director of the Prevention Research Center (1983-86), the first federally funded national alcohol research center with a primary emphasis on prevention. From 1986 to 1995 he was the principal investigator for the California site of the Community Intervention Trial to Reduce Smoking(COMMIT). This project funded by the National Cancer Institute was the largest randomized community trial ever developed for the prevention of smoking.

"In 1993 he was the founding director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, an organization conducting research and training in the use of media to promote healthy public policies. Dr. Wallack is one of the primary architects of media advocacy -- an innovative approach to working with mass media to advance social and public health issues. He has published extensively and lectures frequently on the news media and public health policy issues. He is the principal author of News for a Change: An Advocate’s Guide to Working with the Media, (Sage, 1999) and Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention(Sage, 1993). He is also co-editor of Mass Media and Public Health: Complexities and Conflicts (Sage, 1990).

"Dr. Wallack has been honored with various awards. He was one of the original recipients of the Innovators Award (2000-05) from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This award recognized lifetime achievement and innovation in the area of prevention."


 * Director, The Praxis Project

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Breakthrough Institute (Wallack is on the Advisory Board, as of 2011-04-14)