Department of Public Health Education
Tracy Nichols, Associate Professor
437 HHP Building
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
(336) 334-5389 (office)
(336) 334-3238 (fax)
trnicho2@uncg.edu
Curriculum Vita
I received my undergraduate degree from the New School for Social Research, followed by a master's degree in general psychology from Hunter College, and a doctorate in developmental psychology from Columbia University. My training in developmental psychology was complemented by my work in the Department of Public Health at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where I spent 17 years conducting large-scale randomized drug and violence prevention trials with urban youth.
My current research interests are focused on women’s health and development across the lifespan; investigating ways in which biological and social transitions interact with daily health practices and perceptions. I am primarily interested in the design, development, evaluation and refinement of gender-responsive health promotion programs. The intervention strategies I find to be most exciting and relevant to my work are those that can be implemented during critical transition points (i.e. puberty, pregnancy/postpartum periods, perimenopause/menopause) within a woman’s lifespan, thereby making health behavior change more salient; and programs that address significant relationship elements, such as mother-daughter bonding.
My research is conducted through the Center for Women’s Health and Wellness, where I am developing an Adolescent Girls' Initiative. Below is a brief description of my current projects:
- Girls-Only: An Examination of Gender-Specific Programming for Adolescent Health Promotion Using an extensive literature review and in-depth interviews with key informants, this project is designed to understand the strengths and challenges of designing, implementing and evaluating gender-specific health promotion programs for pre-adolescent and adolescent girls.
- BRIGHT: Building Relationships Involves Growing Healthy Together The purpose of this study is to understand the experiences and perceptions of urban mother-daughter dyads in order to develop effective and meaningful family-based health promotion interventions. Employing in-depth interviews with adult women and their adolescent daughters, this study examines perceptions of family health, individual health, and the role of mother-daughter relations in the maintenance of healthy lifestyles.
- Women’s Ways, Women’s Days: This pilot study has two separate aims (1) to understand how mothers perceive their daily lives and how their day-to-day activities relate to their health and (2) to pilot test a protocol and survey for assessing daily health practices and mood using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). This study will examine the challenges that arise when caring for others while caring for one self and identify the strategies that women employ to meet these challenges.
- Smoking Transitions Among Urban Girls: The purpose of this project is to understand the etiology of smoking among multi-ethnic urban adolescent girls. Conducting secondary analyses of two large-scale school-based drug prevention trials in NYC, this within-gender study also examines the development of risk and protective factors that have been attributed to smoking among girls as they transition through middle/junior high school and into high school.
- Good Fit: Promoting After-School Physical Activity among Urban Adolescents The aims of this study are to (1) refine and test a theoretical model of physical activity participation among urban adolescents and (2) using adolescent participation, develop a gender-responsive physical activity promotion program to be used in community organizations that serve multi-ethnic urban youth during the after-school hours.
I am is committed to the promotion of gender-responsive research; the meaningful inclusion of women’s concerns in all aspects of health-related research and program development; increasing the scientific dialogue on the meaning of gender differences and it’s importance in research; as well as promoting solutions and interventions that encompass a holistic view of wellness and that are salient to the social contexts in which women live.
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