Vic Strecher

Dr. Strecher graduated in 1983 with an M.P.H. and Ph.D. in Health Behavior & Health Education from the University of Michigan. After positions as Assistant and Associate Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Strecher returned in 1995 to University of Michigan, where he became Professor of Health Behavior & Health Education and Director of Cancer Prevention and Control in the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Within a decade, the Cancer Prevention and Control Program under Dr. Strecher’s direction grew from roughly $2 million to over $14 million in annual direct grant funding. Dr. Strecher founded and directs the Center for Health Communications Research, a multidisciplinary team of behavioral scientists, physicians, computer engineers, instructional designers, graphic artists, and students from a wide range of disciplines. Dr. Strecher's academic interests include evaluative research of interventions for health promotion, disease prevention and disease management. He has published over 100 journal articles and chapters, and has been cited in scientific publications over 4,000 times, on these subjects. In 1993, Dr. Strecher was issued a United States Patent of a tailored health-related behavior change and adherence system. Originally focused on self-help, telecounseling, and physician-initiated counseling, in 1990 Dr. Strecher began exploring the role of interactive communications technologies on health behavior change and decision-making. Since then, Dr. Strecher has been a leading investigator on over $45 million in grant-funded studies of computer-based interactive communications for health-related behavior change and decision-making. More recently, Dr. Strecher’s focus has been on both exploring the active elements of health communication and the dissemination of interactive health interventions to real-world settings. Dr. Strecher has been a reviewer for over twenty scientific journals and currently serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. He was appointed in 1998 by Al Gore to serve on the Department of Health and Human Service’s Science Panel on Interactive Health Communications and currently serves on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors, reporting directly to the Director of the NCI. In 1998, Dr. Strecher founded HealthMedia Inc., an Ann Arbor-based company that has grown to over 165 employees, developing and disseminating award-winning tailored health interventions in seven languages for health promotion, disease prevention, behavioral health, and disease management to millions of users through health plans, employers, pharmaceutical companies and governments in North America, Europe, and Asia. In October, 2008, HealthMedia Inc. was purchased by Johnson & Johnson as their initial investment in the area of prevention and wellness. Dr. Strecher remains active in HealthMedia, Inc. as their newly created Chief Visionary Officer, primarily involved in global market development, product strategy, and intellectual property acquisition. Dr. Strecher and the organizations he founded – the University of Michigan Center for Health Communications Research and HealthMedia, Inc – have won numerous national and international awards including the Secretary of Health and Human Services Award for Innovations in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, the Delta Omega National Merit Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Health, the HEDIR Award for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, two Smithsonian Awards, three International Health and Medical Media Awards (the “Freddie”), the International Film Festival Silver Screen Award, the Austrian Gold Victoria Award, Innovations in Healthcare Award, two eHealthcare Leadership Awards, the National Business Coalition on Health’s Mercury Award, and the C. Everett Koop National Health Award. Dr. Strecher serves on a number of community boards, including two programs involving underserved youth entrepreneurship and micro-lending in Southeastern Michigan. He is also on the board of the Michigan Theater, a historic theater devoted to independent films. Dr. Strecher is an ardent skier, hiker, and tennis player, and an amateur historian of science. He is married and has two daughters, 22 and 18 years old. He knows nothing about daughters.
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Founder & Chief Visionary Officer, Healthmedia Inc.