Promoting healthy behaviors

Lucy Napper, a British-born psychologist whose research has included risky alcohol use on college campuses, joined Lehigh this fall as the first new faculty member hired into the university’s Community Health cluster. 

Napper, who was co-director and visiting assistant research professor at the HeadsUp Alcohol Research Lab at Loyola Marymount University, will take on the role of Quantitative Health Data Specialist in the Community Health cluster as well as teach courses in statistics and the psychology of drug use and addiction.

“There’s enormous potential to do some exciting projects with the community and to promote healthy behaviors in the Lehigh Valley,” said Napper, who will serve as assistant professor of psychology and join a core group of five faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education.

“One of the reasons I chose to join the team here at Lehigh is that there are already many faculty who are enthusiastic about this (cluster) and who are engaged in health and community research.”

Napper’s background is in health psychology, which includes trying to understand how people make decisions about their health and why they engage in risky health behaviors, and how to design effective prevention and intervention programs to promote healthier behaviors.

A graduate of the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, Napper earned her doctorate in health and social psychology and her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She completed her postdoctoral work in HIV prevention and developing and evaluating new measures related to drug use, sexual risk, and mental health. She was recipient of a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award to develop a measure of HIV risk perception.

“Lucy Napper comes to Lehigh with a stellar background in community-based participatory research,” said Donald E. Hall, the Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who is leading the cluster. “She has a strong external funding record and a deep commitment to working on substance abuse and mental health issues among college-age students and in minority communities.”

The Community Health cluster, announced last year, will build on an area where Lehigh already has expertise. The cluster will work closely with community members in all aspects of research, from defining the problems affecting a neighborhood, to developing questions to ask in surveys, to collecting and analyzing data and to designing interventions.

This approach, known as Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), is gaining traction in the community health field because it promotes more effective and self-sustaining interventions through community involvement. Two additional hires will be made to round out the team: an epidemiologist in the department of sociology and anthropology and an experienced CBPR researcher in the College of Education.

“Community members and organizations are already working to improve the health and well-being of the local community,” said Napper. What takes time, she said, is determining how academics can work with community members without dictating what needs to be done but rather listening and gaining an understanding of the public health issues from the community’s perspective.

Before joining Lehigh’s faculty, Napper was the principal investigator of a two-year study that looked at the effectiveness of leveraging parents’ influence to reduce risky alcohol use among first-year college students. Despite a range of traditional interventions that focus on students, she said, there has not been much reduction in binge drinking on college campuses in the past 20 years.

“These days, parents have much more contact with their children than previous generations,” Napper said, referring to the pull of email, texting and other social media. Her research indicates that parents may play an important role in talking to their college-age children about how they make their choices about alcohol use and ultimately promote healthier behaviors.

 “I am looking forward to partnering with faculty, students, and community members to explore innovative ways to conduct research and promote health outcomes on the Lehigh campus and in broader local and national communities,” Napper said.

Photo by Christa Neu

Story by Mary Ellen Alu