Assistant Professor, Department of Health Management and Policy
Phone: 215.762.7547
Email: nav29@drexel.edu
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, women’s health and the influence of culture on health behaviors particularly for chronic conditions. As a Ford Foundation fellow, her master’s thesis work 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.
Upon completion of her doctorate, 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. Dr. Vaughn has been a part of numerous NIH funded protocols and has worked on the design, data collection and analysis phases of these protocols, as well as given numerous conference and community presentations in the areas of obesity, overweight, women’s health and community-based participatory research with African Americans. She recently co-authored a publication in Ethnicity and Disease (2005) entitled, “Church Based Obesity Treatment for African American Women Improves Adherence.” Finally, Dr. Vaughn has worked in both the university and community settings for many years and has a passion for working with underserved communities. Currently, Dr. Vaughn is also a Senior Health Policy and Research Analyst for the Center for Health Equality (CHE) in the Drexel University School of Public Health. As part of her work with CHE, Dr. Vaughn works on building relationships and grant funding opportunities between the community and academia in order to improve health for vulnerable and underserved populations.
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.
:: Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
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