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| Inside the Academy: Profiles
James M. Eddy, DEd, FAAHB
Robert J. McDermott, PhD, FAAHB
Inside The Academy, Editor
In this issue,
Inside the
Academy profiles Dr James M. Eddy, professor of
health behavior and promotion, Department of Health Science, University of Alabama
at Tuscaloosa. Dr Eddy's academic background includes baccalaureate
and master's degrees from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport,
an institution that has spawned many of the past and current leaders in health
education, including a number of Academy members. Before pursuing a graduate
degree, Dr Eddy learned a pragmatic side of health education during 2 years as a high
school teacher in East Greenbush, New York. He began his teaching career in higher
education at SUNY-Brockport (1974) before assuming doctoral studies at Penn
State University, where he completed his DEd degree in 1979. He remained on
the faculty at Penn State until 1987, eventually gaining tenure and rising to the
rank of associate professor. In 1987, Dr Eddy was invited to become chair of the Health
Studies Program at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Subsequent to moving
into this administrative role at the University of Alabama, he has taken on a variety
of additional academic administrative roles that include business and industry,
leadership preparation for higher education, distance learning, and public health
professional preparation. Included in this array of responsibilities has been the
role of Director of the PhD Program in Health Education and Health Promotion
offered jointly by the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and the School of Public
Health and School of Education at the University
of Alabama at Birmingham. |
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Dr Eddy is an author or coauthor
of approximately 80 published articles in the professional literature — works that
have spanned 4 different decades. He has made a like number of presentations to
audiences at professional meetings during this same time frame. Dr Eddy's published papers are broad in scope, ranging
from issues in worksite health promotion to antecedents of smoking among
adolescents, nutrition and dietary intake in selected populations, and professional
preparation and administration issues in health-education degree programs. Added to
this litany of works are 2 monographs on health promotion in the workplace and a
college-level textbook on death education. Perhaps the most abiding characteristic of
Dr Eddy's publications is the seamless integration of research, teaching, and
service that is blended in so many of his papers.
Total funding for the research
programs with which Dr Eddy has been associated is greater than $5.8 million.
Premiere among his extramural work is Good Health Makes $ense, a worksite health
promotion program jointly funded by Alabama Power. This 12-year, $ 5.1-million
project (1992-2003) was established to design, implement, and evaluate a
comprehensive health-promotion and disease-prevention program for employees.
For more than 20 years, he has
played leading roles in the governance and research missions of the American
Association of Health Education, the American School Health Association, the Society
for Public Health Education, and the American Public Health Association. In
addition to serving as a reviewer and editorial
board member of several scholarly journals, for several years he has been the publisher
of the American Journal of Health Studies,
a peer-reviewed journal of emerging professional stature. He was one of the
first initiated Fellows of the American Academy of Health Behavior (1998) and was
a member of the Academy's first Board of Directors. More recently, Dr Eddy
was honored with the HEDIR Technology Award for his creative works, including ones
on CD-ROM and other technology-driven elements contributing to distance learning
in health education and promotion.
To conclude, Dr Eddy offers a record
of professional accomplishment that profoundly illustrates both scholarship
and service leadership. This summary of his major achievements demonstrates
why he is held in high esteem among his colleagues Inside the Academy.
Am J Health Behav 2003;27(4):463
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