Lydia O'Donnell

Lydia O'Donnell is Director of HHD's Center for Research on High Risk Behaviors. She has conducted extensive research in the area of adolescent and young adult risk behaviors, prevention programs, and community health promotion. In the mid-1980s, she conducted some of the first research with health care providers on AIDS stigma to improve the quality of health services. An enduring interest has been the development of culturally relevant and feasible interventions that can be implemented and sustained by local institutions and providers, including schools, clinics, and community agencies.

On multi-site and investigator-driven studies funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and several foundations, Dr. O’Donnell has developed and evaluated prevention interventions addressing sexual risk taking, violence, and alcohol and substance use. These range from complex, multi-component, multi-level programs to brief media-based interventions and social marketing. A number of these projects have been nationally recognized as effective and widely disseminated, including VOICES/VOCES, an HIV prevention program for African American and Latino adults, and the Reach for Health Community Youth Service program. She is currently leading several projects focused on parent education, including Saving Sex for Later and Healthy Futures, as well as risk prevention programs for patients attending sexually transmitted disease clinics, African American young men, and Latino families. In addition to leading field trials of intervention programs, Dr. O’Donnell conducts both quantitative and qualitative research to inform understanding of risk and protective factors influencing youth and young adult physical, mental, and social health.

Dr. O’Donnell has conducted research at EDC for over 20 years and has published widely. She received an Ed.D. in Human Development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in gender roles and mental health at the National Institute of Mental Health. Her B.A. is from the University of Pennsylvania.