Gary L Kreps

Gary L. Kreps is a well known Communication scholar. He is currently the Eileen and Steve Mandell Professor of Health Communication, Chair of the Department of Communication, and Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He also serves on the Governing Board of the Center for Social Science Research, and is a faculty affiliate of the National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases, the Center for Health Care Ethics and Policy, and the Center for Climate Change Communication at Mason. Prior to his faculty appointment at Mason, he served for five years (1999-2004) as the founding Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NIH), where he planned, developed, and coordinated major new national research and outreach initiatives concerning risk communication, health promotion, behavior change, technology development, and information dissemination to promote effective cancer prevention, screening, control, care, and survivorship. He has also served as the Founding Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University in New York, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and in faculty and administrative roles at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities. He serves as a member of the board of directors for the Sun Safety Alliance and PatientInform.

Gary’s areas of expertise include health communication and promotion, information dissemination, organizational communication, information technology, multicultural relations, and applied research methods. He is an active scholar, whose published work includes more than 40 books and edited volumes, and more than 220 scholarly articles and chapters concerning the applications of communication knowledge in society. He has received research funding from the NIH, NSF, CDC, HRSA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the US Department of Education, the Kaiser Family Foundation,and several universities, major corporations, and health care systems. He has edited special issues of major research journals, including he Journal of Health Communication, the American Behavioral Scientist, Patient Education and Counseling, the Journal of Health Psychology, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the Journal of Cancer Education, and the Electronic Journal of Communication, and edits important scholarly book series in Health Communication and Communication and Social Organization for Hampton Press. He has also received numerous honors, including the 2005-2006 Pfizer Visiting Professorship of Clear Health Communication Award, the 2004 Robert Lewis Donohew Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award, the 2002 Future of Health Technology Award, the 2002 Distinguished Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions in Consumer Health Informatics and Online Health, the 2000 Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award from both the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association, and the 1998 Gerald M. Phillips Distinguished Applied Communication Scholarship Award from the National Communication Association.

Education

* BA, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1975, Communication;
* MA, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1976, Communication;
* Ph.D., University of Southern California, 1979, Communication

Influence

Gary L. Kreps is a founding scholar of the field of health communication. He has written influential books and articles about the applications of communication knowledge in society.

Published works

Gary L. Kreps has published numerous books, articles, and chapters concerning health, risk, and organizational communication, as well as about research methods. He edits two major book series for Hampton Press concerning Health Communication and Communication and Social Organizing. He was editor of the Applied Communication Research book series for the National Communication Association. He has served as a guest editor for a number of scholarly journal special issues, including special issues of the American Behvaioral Scientist, the Journal of Health Psychology, the Electronic Journal of Communication, the Journal of Health Communication, Patient Education and Counseling, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Communication Research Reports, and the Journal of Cancer Education.

Recent publications

O’Hair, H.D., Kreps, G.L., & Sparks, L. (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of communication and cancer care. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Rowan, K.E., Kreps, G.L., Botan, C.H., Sparks, L., Samoilenko, S., & Bailey, C.L. (2007). Responding to terrorism: Risk communication, crisis management, and the CAUSE model. In H. D. O’Hair, R. L. Heath, G. Ledlow, & K. Ayotte (Eds.), Terrorism: Communication and rhetorical perspectives (pp. 421-449). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Kreps, G.L, Query, J.L., & Bonaguro, E.W. (2007). The interdisciplinary study of health communication and its relationship to communication science. In L. Lederman (Ed). Beyond These Walls: Readings in Health Communication, (pp. 2-13). Los Angeles: Roxbury.

Mayer, D.K., Terrin, N.C., Kreps, G.L., Menon, U., McCance, K., Parsons, S.K., & Mooney, K.H. (2007). Cancer survivors information seeking behaviors: A comparison of survivors who do and don’t seek information. Patient Education and Counseling, 65(3), 342-350.

Kreps,G.L., & Bonaguro, E. (2007). Communication and cancer prevention, control, and care. In K. B. Wright & S. Moore, Applied Health Communication (pp. 257-269. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Kreps, G.L. (2006). One size does not fit all: Adapting communication to the needs and literacy levels of individuals. Annals of Family Medicine (online, invited commentary) http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/eletters/4/3/205.

Kreps, G.L. (2006). Communication and racial inequities in health care. American Behavioral Scientist, 49: 6, 1-15.

Marcus, A., Morra, M., Bright, M., Fleisher, L., Kreps, G.L., & Perocchia, R. (2005). The CIS model for collaborative research in health communications: A brief retrospective from the current generation of research. Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives, 10, S1, 235-245.

Hesse, B. W., Nelson, D. E., Kreps, G. L., Croyle, R. T., Arora, N. K., & Rimer, B. K. (2005). Trust and sources of health information. The impact of the Internet and its implications for health care providers: Findings from the first Health Information National Trends Survey. Archives of Internal Medicine, 165, 1-7.

Sparks, L., Kreps, G.L., Botan, C., & Rowan, K.E. (2005). Responding to terrorism: Translating communication research into practice. Communication Research Reports, 22(1), 1-5.

Whitten, P., Kreps, G.L., & Eastin, M. (2005). Creating a framework for online cancer services research to facilitate timely and interdisciplinary applications. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 7(3):e34

Kreps, G.L. (2005). Disseminating relevant information to underserved audiences: Implications from the Digital Divide Pilot Projects. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 93(4), 65-70.

Parker, R. & Kreps, G.L. (2005). Library outreach: Overcoming health literacy challenges. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 93(4), 78-82.

Honors, awards

Gary L. Kreps has received numerous awards for his research and scholarships including:

2005-2006 Pfizer Visiting Professorship of Clear Health Communication Award, 2004 Robert Lewis Donohew Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award, 2002 Future of Health Technology Award, 2002 Distinguished Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions in Consumer Health Informatics and Online Health, 2000 Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award from both the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association, 1998 Gerald M. Phillips Distinguished Applied Communication Scholarship Award from the National Communication Association.

External links

Faculty Biography, George Mason University [http://comm.gmu.edu/faculty/bio.php?fname=Gary&lname=Kreps]

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