Nicole A. Vaughn, PhD

Dr. Vaughn is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at Drexel University. She received her Masters and Doctorate in Medical Psychology from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland. As a research health psychologist with a focus on health disparities reduction, Dr. Vaughn has extensive education, training, and experience in community-based research with ethnic minority groups. Her research interests include a focus on community-based approaches to eliminating health disparities, health care access and utilization among insured and uninsured minority groups, obesity and overweight, maternal and child health and the influence of culture on health behaviors particularly for chronic conditions. As a Ford Foundation fellow, her master’s thesis focused on examining health care behaviors for cancer and diabetes symptoms among young-adult males in the military and her doctoral work focused on examining data from a large federal database to determine the impact of health insurance status on health care use and quality self-care behaviors among insured African Americans and Hispanics with Type 2 Diabetes. Dr. Vaughn’s doctoral work received meritorious distinction at the annual Society for Behavioral Medicine meeting.

Dr. Vaughn completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine and Health Disparities which involved psychoeducational interventions for African American women and their families in church settings in the greater Washington, D.C. area. As part of that work, she was responsible for coordinating, planning, and leading weekly structured weight groups– according to Sbrocco’s Behavior Choice Therapy model (See Ethnicity & Disease (2005) publication, "Church Based Obesity Treatment for African American Women Improves Adherence"). In addition, she worked with the Montgomery County (MD) Department of Health and Human Services' African American Health Program to evaluate an initiative to reduce infant mortality (See JNMA (2008) publication, "The Impact of Nurse Case Management Home Visitation on Birth Outcomes in African American Women").

Since relocating to Philadelphia, Dr. Vaughn has continued her work in community-based participatory research (CBPR) and health disparities. Over the past few years, she has worked with the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health on a replication of their salon-based health education programs in Philadelphia (See Progress in Community Health Partnership publication (Summer 2009, 3:2), "Community-academic partnerships: Lessons learned from replicating a salon-based health education and promotion program"). In addition, she continues to collaborate with researchers as well as communities across the city on health promotion, chronic disease management (i.e., obesity and diabetes), and maternal and child health initiatives.

Finally, Dr. Vaughn is also a research faculty member for the CDC-funded U.P.A.C.E Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC), a CBPR initiative developed to design, implement and evaluate programs to enhance communities affected by violence. Dr. Vaughn serves as the Co-Principal Investigator of the Centerpiece Research Project for the PCVPC and works with the Center’s community mobilization team to build strong relationships and deliver needed workshop-based programs to targeted sites in West and Southwest Philadelphia.

Research Interests: Racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care; nutrition and chronic disease (obesity, diabetes); health disparities in the military; health care access and utilization; community-based participatory research, maternal and child health.

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