Megan A. Lewis

Megan A. Lewis, PhD, applies her unique expertise in health-related interpersonal communication to conduct complex program evaluations and advance the fields of health promotion and disease management.

Her work spans a range of health topics, including physical activity, nutrition, cancer prevention, HIV, Type 1 and 2 diabetes, arthritis, and chronic disease management. For example, Dr. Lewis is directing the development of an interactive computer-based tool that will deliver highly tailored prevention messages to people living with HIV during their primary care clinic appointments. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the tool will also generate feedback to patients and their health care providers to support their communication around adherence, retention in care, and sexual risk reduction.

As part of a National Institutes of Health project to sequence the entire genome of 400 infants, Dr. Lewis is co-principal investigator of the RTI effort to develop educational and consent tools to determine how best to educate parents and physicians about genomic testing and its implications. The tool will help parents decide whether they would like genome testing for their newborn and explore how much, or how little, information they would like. Once the aid is developed and best practices are in place, RTI will develop a mobile technology application to use in hospital or clinical settings.

Dr. Lewis also leads an effort to review literature on the techniques and strategies used to communicate medical evidence to consumers, clinicians, and policy makers. She is responsible for leading key questions related to dissemination, abstraction, analysis, and report preparation for this project, which is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.