After receiving his doctorate in social psychology from New Zealand’s Waikato University in 1976, he pursued postdoctoral training in social psychology and evaluation research in the United States at Northwestern University, under a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. While at Northwestern University, Dr Flay was also visiting assistant professor (1977-78) in the department of psychology.

The years 1978-80 found him as a member of the Health Studies Department, University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. While at the University of Waterloo, he was the coprincipal investigator of the first Waterloo randomized trial of the social influences approach to smoking prevention. In 1980 he began a 7-year tenure at the University of Southern California (USC), first as an assistant professor of health behavior and deputy director of the USC Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, and later (1984-87), with multiple faculty appointments, including associate professor, Department of Preventive Medicine (School of Medicine), the Annenberg School of Communication, and the School of Pharmacy. While at USC, he also was the principal investigator of the long term follow-up of the Waterloo project (funded by the National Cancer Institute [NCI]), and of 2 school and television prevention studies also funded by the NCI, each involving approximately 7000 students in 30 different school districts. In addition, he was coprincipal investigator of Projects SMART (National Institute of Drug Abuse [NIDA]), SHARP (NCI), and the Midwest Prevention Project (also known as Project STAR in Kansas City, Mo, and Project I-STAR in Indianapolis, Ind, each funded by NIDA), projects consisting of school-based drug abuse prevention, school and family-oriented smoking prevention, and community-based drug abuse prevention studies, respectively.

Dr Flay moved to his current venue (UIC) in 1987 where he became the founding director of the Prevention Research Center, a post he held for 10 years. In 1997, he became the founding director of the Health Research and Policy Centers, a cluster of university-wide centers with missions related to health behavior, health promotion, and disease prevention, the health status of the elderly, health services, and health policy. He remained in this position until 2000, stepping down to focus more fully on his own program of research.

During his more than 15 years at UIC, Dr Flay has been the coprincipal investigator of studies of televised smoking cessation "clinics" (NCI funded), of a school-based smokeless tobacco prevention study in southern California (NCI funded), and of the Youth AIDS Prevention Project (YAPP) conducted in Chicago-area schools (National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH] funded). He was the initial principal investigator of the NCI-funded Beeper Project, and he currently serves the principal investigator role for 2 other NIDA-funded intervention projects.

Today, Dr Flay continues his research on the precursors and determinants of smoking and drug abuse, as well as on HIV/AIDS and violence prevention. He is the principal investigator for the ABAN AYA Youth Project (initially funded by the NIH Office for Research on Minority Health, administered by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD] to reduce violence, unsafe sex, and drug use in inner-city African American schools and communities) and for 3 projects focused on secondary data analysis of adolescent substance use. He is also directing a randomized trial of the Positive Action Program, a combination of a K-12 curriculum, with accompanying school environment, parent/family, and other community components, all aimed at favorably impacting health-compromising activities of children and youth. Dr Flay’s cumulative extramural funding as a principal or coprincipal investigator to date is in excess of $70 million.

Dr Flay has served as a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, among many others, and has been a member of the National Research Council Panel on Evaluation of AIDS Prevention Interventions (1999-2000). Between 1994 and 2000, Dr Flay was a member of expert review committees to critique behavioral and/or prevention research applications at 7 US Department of Health and Human Services agencies. He is a member of the Research Network on the Etiology of Tobacco Dependence and codirector (with economist Frank Chaloupka) of a large project to develop state and community databases of indicators of youth alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, both of which are funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr Flay is a Fellow of 3 professional organizations (Society of Behavioral Medicine, Society for Community Research and Action, and American Academy of Health Behavior). He is a past recipient of the American School Health Association Research Council Award (1993) and the University of Texas-Houston John P. McGovern Award in Health Promotion (2000). In 2002 he became only the second person to be awarded the American Academy of Health Behavior Research Laureate. In introducing Dr Flay to receive his Research Laureate Medal at the American Academy of Health Behavior’s Second Scientific Meeting in 2002, the first recipient of this award, Dr Lawrence W. Green, commented: "With this award we declare without qualification, hesitation or fear of contradiction, that UIC Distinguished Professor Brian R. Flay stands in the highest ranks among the investigators in our field, not only in the United States, but with international recognition as well. His work spans such applications in institutional settings as well as in the mass media and in communitywide efforts, with particular attention to the health and related problems of adolescents, and increasing emphasis on the necessity of combining the institutional and community components in comprehensive, integrated and coherent programs. His scholarly courage and imagination in tackling such complexity systematically and with rigor has been an inspiration to a field struggling both with the eclectic theoretical requirements and the methodological challenges of such systems."

In summary, Dr Flay’s research program, although multifaceted, has provided specific milestone contributions to our understanding of health risk-taking behavior of adolescents and landmarks concerning the implementation of school-based and community-based health-behavior intervention trials. Thus, he and his colleagues have advanced our knowledge of the health behaviors of children and youth, as well as our ability to craft responsive programmatic interventions. Dr Flay has reached an extraordinary mark of excellence among health behavior researchers, and we are proud to acknowledge his achievements Inside the Academy.