Inside The Academy:
Profiling Dr. Robert S. Gold    

Robert J. McDermott, PhD
Inside The Academy, Editor  

In this issue, Inside the Academy presents Dr. Robert S. Gold, professor, Department of Health Education, University of Maryland. To have an accurate profile of Dr. Gold's academic life and contributions to health education and behavior research, one needs to have a firm grasp of his educational background and professional pathways. Dr. Gold earned a Dr.P.H. (1980) in public health epidemiology from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. That degree represented his second doctorate, for he previously had obtained a Ph.D. in health education (1976) at the University of Oregon. His doctoral experience may have foretold at least a portion of his future. While completing the health education degree, Gold worked concurrently on a doctoral degree in computer science and, in fact, was only a "dissertation" shy of having that be his primary field of endeavor. Previous educational work, M.S. (health education - 1971) and B.S. (biology - 1969), was completed at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport.

From 1970 until 1974, Dr. Gold was an instructor in the Department of Health Education at SUNY-Brockport, and for two of those years, Director of the Drug Information Center as well. After departing for Oregon in 1974, Dr. Gold spent 2 years as a graduate teaching fellow there, before returning to Brockport, where he was assistant professor of health education (1976-78), prior to leaving for Houston as a Public Health Service-sponsored postdoctoral trainee (1978-80). In the early 1980s, when I queried him about what prompted him to pursue a second doctorate, he retorted: "Honestly, I didn't know enough to be doing what I was doing."

Dr. Gold's next faculty assignment (1980-84) was at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIU-C), where he began supervisory work with the first of more than two dozen doctoral students whom he has mentored through the years. Paralleling this experience, Dr. Gold purchased his first microcomputer and began exploring the device's potential as a health education tool. The opportunity to head the School Health Initiative for the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), and later, to become Director of ODPHP's Prevention Policy Branch, brought Dr. Gold to the nation's capital. After he concluded these government assignments (1984-86), Dr. Gold joined the faculty of the University of Maryland.

While at Maryland, he was Director of Graduate Studies (1984-85), founder and Director of the Minority Health Research Laboratory (1986-89), and Director of the Laboratory for Health Promotion Research and Development (1991-94). After splitting his time (1990-94) between the University of Maryland and Macro International Inc., he became Vice President of Macro, Director of Public Health Research and Evaluation, and Director of Technology Product Research and Development, in the Applied Technologies Division. At Macro, Dr. Gold served as principal investigator or Officer-in-Charge for projects with cumulative funding in excess of $18 million. Included among these projects was the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey.

In 1999, Dr. Gold returned to a full-time faculty position at the University of Maryland. In his illustrious career in academia and industry, he has authored or coauthored more than 75 peer-reviewed, mostly data-based articles, 13 books (including the personal health text, Connections for Health and book chapters almost too numerous to list. Perhaps his most remarkable contribution to health education, however, has been the spearhead he has provided in the area of applied technology. He is nationally and internationally recognized as one of the foremost experts in the application of advanced communications technologies to health education, ranging from interactive video and computer software to expert systems technology. An abbreviated list of recent software to which he has contributed includes Outcomes: The Results Oriented System for Community Development (1998), HealthQuest: Health Education Programs for College Level Students (1997), and EMPOWER: Expert Methods for Planning and Organizing Within Everyone's Reach (1997). A similarly partial descriptive list of funded research or evaluation projects for which technology itself has been the subject of study includes (1) an interactive multimedia system to be used in school settings by children with asthma, (2) the use of CD-ROM as a delivery vehicle to persons with disabilities, and (3) the development of an expert system equipped with physician "decision rules" to aid the management of asthma patients.

Dr. Gold has been recognized by his peers in the past for his remarkable accomplishments. He was the first-ever recipient of the International Health Edu cation Directory Listserv's HEDIR Award for Contributions to Technology (1997). He has also received the Eta Sigma Gamma Distinguished Service Award (1991), the American School Health Association's Research Council Award (1989), and the Association for the Advancement of Health Education's Scholar Award (1987).

In summary, Dr. Gold has advanced our knowledge of health behavior research, as well as the means for its teaching and dissemination. The achievements of the students and colleagues whom he has mentored through the years may indeed provide the best testimonial to his own success. Dr. Robert S. Gold has excelled in academia, in government, and in the private sector. We are pleased to profile this excellence Inside the Academy.