Assoc. Director for Behavioral Science
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases
1600 Clifton Rd
Mailstop C-10
Atlanta,
GA
USA
30333
cprue@cdc.gov
Biographical Sketch:
Christine Prue is the Associate Director for Behavioral Science at CDC’s National Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. She works to apply and advance the science of health behavior and health communication to prevent and control infectious diseases that result from the interaction of people, animals, and the environment. She has presented at conferences and published many articles in public health journals for the past 15 years.
Before working on the prevention of infectious diseases, she was the branch chief for the Prevention Research Branch in the Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. Chris led three-multidisciplinary teams that developed, implemented, and evaluated interventions to prevent serious birth defects and developmental disabilities. Before working in the area of birth defects prevention, she worked in CDC’s Office of Communication, where she assisted programs across CDC and ATSDR with health communication planning, implementation, and evaluation activities. While in the Office of Communication, she worked to develop CDC’s health communication capacity by developing multi-media and web-based planning tools (e.g., CDCynergy, HealthComm Key) and many of the curricula used in CDC University’s health communication courses. Chris also has been deployed to India and Indonesia to address large-scale refusal of polio vaccine. In both instances, quick diagnosis of the underlying issues and development of persuasive communication efforts to address the issues, led to substantial increases in polio vaccination rates. Before coming to CDC, Chris worked in health departments at the local and state level in the beautiful state of Maine.