Melissa Peskin

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About

Dr. Melissa Peskin is an epidemiologist and behavioral scientist with over 20 years of experience conducting research focused on the determinants of adolescent health risk behaviors related to sexual risk-taking and violence, including bullying, aggression, and dating violence. She also has extensive experience designing, implementing, and evaluating health promotion programs for youth. She has been PI or co-PI on several large randomized controlled trials to develop, evaluate and disseminate these programs. Examples of programs include “It’s Your Game… Keep it Real”, an effective adolescent sexual health program, “It’s Your Game-Tech”, the Internet version of It’s Your Game, and “Me and You: Building Healthy Relationships”, an effective healthy relationships and dating violence prevention program for middle school students. She was also PI of a study to develop an online decision support system to help school districts adopt and implement evidence-based sexual health programs and is working to adapt this tool for bullying and dating violence prevention programs.

Center Affiliation

• Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research

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Research Interests

• Adolescent Health
• Epidemiology
• Implementation Science
• Injury and Violence
• Mental Health
• Program Evaluation
• Sexual and Reproductive Health