Department

Applied Health Science

Education

• Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, PhD, Health Behavior

• Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, MPH, Behavioral Sciences and Health Education

• University of Virginia, BA, Studies in Women and Gender; Studies in Health and Society

Background

Alyssa Lederer is an applied behavioral scientist and master certified health education specialist. Much of her current work focuses on enhancing people's health through the design and evaluation of theory- and evidence-informed health promotion interventions, particularly in the areas of adolescent sexual health, workforce development, and most recently COVID-19. She is especially interested in the intersection between health education and behavior change, community-driven research, and using multiple methods of inquiry. Examples of Dr. Lederer's ongoing sexual health research include the multi-method evaluation of a curricular intervention intended to reduce sexual violence among college students, an assessment of facilitators and barriers to expedited partner therapy (EPT) acceptance for chlamydia among African American male adolescents in New Orleans, and a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of graphic images of sexually transmitted infections in sexuality education. Over the past two years, Dr. Lederer has also worked to understand how COVID-19 has impacted college students and ways in which institutions of higher education can best respond to meet students' needs.

Committed to public health research, teaching, and practice, and how they inform one another, Dr. Lederer also engages in public health capacity building, workforce development, and scholarship of teaching and learning research to most effectively prepare the current and next generation of public health professionals and educators. Examples of these efforts are a national study on how public health doctoral students are trained to teach, a systematic review on the connection between college students' health and academic performance, and previously serving as Co-Principal Investigator of the HRSA-funded Region 6 South Central Public Health Training Center. Dr. Lederer is also the current Chair of the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment Advisory Committee.

Prior to joining IUB's faculty, Dr. Lederer was an Assistant Professor and Director of the Health Education and Communication MPH Program at Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She also has practice-based experience as a health promotion practitioner and evaluator in non-profit, university, workplace, and K-12 school settings. She enjoys partnering with community organizations and practitioners to help them build their program design, evaluation, and research capacity and to support the translation of research to practice. Dr. Lederer is a Fellow of the American College Health Association and has been the recipient of several teaching and research awards.

Scholarly Interest

• Health education and promotion
• Intervention design
• Program evaluation
• Sexual health, especially sexuality education, sexually transmitted infections, and sexuality-related stigma
• Adolescent and emerging adult health
• Mixed methods research
• Public health workforce development
• Scholarship of teaching and learning

Selected Publications

Articles

Lederer, A.M., Sherwood-Laughlin, C., Kearns, K.D., & O’Loughlin, V.D. (2016). The development and evaluation of a doctoral-level public health pedagogy course for graduate student instructors. College Teaching, 64(1), 19-27.

Lederer, A.M., & Oswalt, S.B. (2017). The value of college health promotion: A critical population and setting for improving the public’s health. American Journal of Health Education, 48(4), 215-218.

Lederer, A.M., & Laing, E.E. (2017). What’s in a name? Perceptions of the terms sexually transmitted disease and sexually transmitted infection among late adolescents. Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 44(11), 707-711.

Oswalt, S.B., Lederer, A.M., Chestnut, K., Day, C., Halbritter, A., & Ortiz, D. (2020). Trends in college students’ mental health diagnoses and utilization of services, 2009-2015. Journal of American College Health, 68(1), 41-51.

Lederer, A.M., Tims, M.S., Czachowski, A.K., Williams-Aghimien, S.E., & Pinto, C.A. (2020). The design, implementation, and evaluation of a health-themed residential learning community for undergraduate students. Health Promotion Practice, 21(4), 484-486.

Lederer, A.M., Hoban, M.T., Lipson, S.K., Zhou, S., & Eisenberg, D. (2021). More than inconvenienced: The unique needs of U.S. college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Education & Behavior, 48(1), 14-19.

Lederer, A.M., & Sheena, B.S. (2021). A content analysis of college students’ gaps in knowledge about sexually transmitted infections. Health Education Journal, 80(2), 238-250.

Johnson, K.M., Lederer, A.M., Liddell, J., Sheffield, S., & McCraw, A. (2021). Teaching to impact sexual violence? Evaluating a curricular intervention for first-year college students. American Journal of Health Promotion, 35(3), 438-441.

Lederer, A.M., & Stolow, J. (2021). Will student contracts keep campuses safe from COVID-19? A behavioral science perspective. Public Health Reports, 136(3), 274-280.

 Lederer, A.M., & Vertacnik, A.L. (2021). Correlates of sexually transmitted infection knowledge among late adolescents. Sexual Health, 18(4), 303-310.

Lederer, A.M., Hindmarch, G.M., Schmidt, N., Gomes, G., Watson, S., Scott, G., & Kissinger, P.J. (2021). Facilitators and barriers of patient-delivered partner therapy acceptance among young African American men who have sex with women in a Southern urban epicenter. Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 48(11), 823-827.

Lederer, A.M., & Hoban, M.T. (2022). The development of the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment III: An improved tool to assess and enhance the health and well-being of college students. Journal of American College Health, 70(6), 1606-1610. 

Stolow, J., & Lederer, A.M. (in press). “I was learning every step of the way”: Student perceptions about a new required foundational Master of Public Health program planning course. Public Health Reports.

Walker, E.L., Lederer, A.M., & Stolow, J. (in press). A qualitative examination of barriers and facilitators to providing pedagogical training for doctoral students in behavioral and social sciences programs at U.S. schools of public health. Pedagogy in Health Promotion.

Lederer, A.M., Johnson, K.M., Liddell, J.L., & Sheffield, S. (in press). The multi-method evaluation of a curricular intervention intended to reduce sexual violence on a college campus: A synthesis of findings and lessons learned. Health Promotion Practice. 

Lederer, A.M., Hoban, M.T., & Kukich, C. (in press). An investigation of COVID-19 outcomes and college student demographics: Results from a national sample. American Journal of Health Promotion.