Jennifer B. Unger, Ph.D. is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the psychological, social, and cultural influences on health-risk and health-protective behaviors, including the role of acculturation and cultural values on adolescent substance use, with the ultimate goal of developing improved prevention programs to reduce health disparities. She and her colleagues have conducted several longitudinal studies of family acculturation patterns and substance use among Hispanic adolescents in Los Angeles and Miami. Her research also has examined cultural influences on ceremonial and commercial tobacco use among American Indian adolescents, smoking prevention among Chinese adolescents, and cultural influences on menthol smoking among African American adults. She is interested in entertainment-education strategies for health education among low-literacy minority populations and has collaborated on the design and evaluation of fotonovelas and telenovelas about secondhand and thirdhand smoke exposure in multiunit housing; diabetes; asthma; and kidney transplantation. She is a co-investigator in the USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORs), where she and her colleagues are investigating the diffusion of messages about emerging tobacco products to vulnerable populations through social media. Previously, she was a co-investigator in the USC Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC), which developed and evaluated culturally targeted smoking prevention programs for culturally diverse youth. Dr. Unger directs the Ph.D. program in Preventive Medicine / Health Behavior Research and teaches a predoctoral research methods course. She is a member of the NIH RPIA (Risk, Prevention, and Intervention in the Addictions) study section, a Deputy Editor for Nicotine & Tobacco Research, and an Associate Editor for Substance Use and Misuse, Journal of Addiction, and Tobacco Regulatory Science.

Health disparities, psychosocial and cultural predictors of adolescent health-risk and health-protective behaviors