Dr. Robyn Housemann, Health Promotion and Exercise Sciences

Dr. Robyn Housemann, Ph.D., MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Health Promotion and Exercise Sciences and Director of the Institute for Holistic Health Studies. She completed her MPH (1994) and Ph.D. (2000) at Saint Louis University School of Public Health. Prior to coming to WestConn in 2006, she served as the Director of Planning and Evaluation for the New England Division of the American Cancer Society for three years. Dr. Housemann served as adjunct faculty at Southern Connecticut State University Department of Public Health for the 2005-2006 school year. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health and a project manager in the Prevention Research Center (CDC funded) at the Saint Louis University School of Public Health. In addition, Dr. Housemann was an adjunct professor and served as the Evaluation Coordinator for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Diabetes Initiative National Program Office in the Division of Health Behavior Research at Washington University. Her interests are in applied research of community-based efforts to prevent chronic disease through programs that target change at the individual level and beyond especially in the areas of nutrition and physical activity. Dr. Housemann has ten years of experience in the design and evaluation of community-based interventions. Her experience includes design and assessment of tools to measure health promotion environments (grocery stores, restaurants, worksites, churches, and physical activity friendliness of communities); training community members to assess their own health promotion environments; quantitative and qualitative evaluation of environmental and policy physical activity projects; support of grass roots coalition development and intervention activities; and participation in nationwide physical activity projects and research committees. She also taught low impact dance aerobics and stretching/relaxation classes for over 20 years. Dr. Housemann has presented lectures, conducted workshops and trainings, and presented fitness sessions at local, regional, and national conferences.