Autor: Norman B. B. Anderson

Norman B. Anderson, Ph.D., is currently Chief Executive Officer of the American Psychological Association. Trained as a practitioner and as a scientist, Dr. Anderson was Professor of Health and Social Behavior at the Harvard University School of Public Health before assuming his current position with the APA. Prior to his Harvard appointment, Anderson was the founding director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and an Associate Director at the National Institutes of Health. During Dr. Anderson′s tenure from 1995 to 2000, OBSSR grew from a $2 million program to a $19 million program and organized the funding of more than $90 million in health research initiatives, including studies on cancer, heart disease, mental health, and diabetes. Dr. Anderson′s research interests lie at the intersection of health and behavior and health and race. At Duke University, where he was an associate professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Psychology from 1985 to 1995, he conducted research studies on the role of stress in the development of hypertension in African Americans and directed the NIH-funded Exploratory Center for Research on Health Promotion in Older Minorities. As noted by APA President Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo upon Norman Anderson′s appointment as CEO of APA, „His greatest strengths are his renaissance qualities as an educator-scientist with clinical credentials and a public interest orientation.“ Anderson is a past-president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the President of the Board of Directors of the Starbright Foundation and a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Drug Abuse at NIH. He is a graduate of the North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC, and earned master′s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He received additional clinical and research training at the Schools of Medicine at Brown and Duke Universities.