Monica Webb Hooper facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Monica Webb Hooper
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Webb Hooper, 2020
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| Born |
Miami, Florida, US
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| Education | University of Miami (BS) University of South Florida (MA, PhD) |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Behavioral science, clinical psychology |
| Institutions | Case Western Reserve University National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities |
| Thesis | Do Expectancies Influence Outcomes for Tailored Smoking Cessation Messages? A Placebo Tailoring Experiment (2005) |
| Doctoral advisor | Thomas H. Brandon |
Monica S. Webb Hooper is an American scientist and psychologist. She helps people understand health behaviors. Currently, she is a leader at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. This institute works to make healthcare fair for everyone. Before this, she was a professor at Case Western Reserve University. She also led research on how cancer affects different groups of people.
Early Life and Education
Monica Webb Hooper grew up in Miami, Florida. She went to the University of Miami for her first college degree. Later, she earned her master's and PhD degrees from the University of South Florida. She studied clinical psychology, which is about understanding how our minds affect our health. Her studies focused on helping people stop smoking. She also completed special training in medical psychology at the University of Florida.
Her Career and Work
Monica Webb Hooper is a behavioral scientist. This means she studies why people make certain choices about their health. She is also a clinical health psychologist. This type of psychologist helps people change behaviors to improve their health.
Before her current role, Dr. Webb Hooper was a professor at Case Western Reserve University. She taught about health and psychology. She also directed research programs. These programs focused on health differences, especially in cancer.
On March 15, 2020, Dr. Webb Hooper became the Deputy Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). In this important job, she works with the director, Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable. They help guide the institute's work. Their goal is to improve health for minority groups. They also work to reduce health differences and make healthcare fair for everyone.
Dr. Webb Hooper strongly believes in including everyone in science and technology fields. This is called the STEM pipeline. She wants more diverse people to become scientists and engineers.
What She Researches
Dr. Webb Hooper has spent her career studying health differences. She looks at how health problems affect different groups of people. This includes African Americans, Hispanic/Latino people, and those with less money. She also studies people living with HIV/AIDS. Her main goal is to prevent long-term illnesses and help people make healthy choices.
As a licensed psychologist, Dr. Webb Hooper led a research lab. Her team studied many health topics. These included preventing chronic diseases and changing health behaviors. They also looked at tobacco use, weight management, and how stress affects health. They studied how social factors influence health.
Her team was the first to show how to create special programs for African Americans to stop smoking. These programs were designed for their culture and worked for a long time. Her work shows that one-size-fits-all approaches don't always work. It's important to create programs that fit specific groups of people.
Dr. Webb Hooper's research often involves working with communities. She tries to understand what causes health risks, like smoking or stress. Then, she develops helpful programs that fit the community's needs. Her main goal is to share scientific findings. She wants to help communities that need it most.
Personal Life
Monica Webb Hooper is married and has three children.
