CHRC Fall 2019 CHRC Distinguished Speaker – Dr. Rajiv Rimal from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

We are pleased to announce the Center for Health and Risk Communication’s Fall 2019 Distinguished Speaker – Dr. Rajiv Rimal, Professor and Chair of the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Rimal’s talk is entitled: “Social norms as sources of both influence and health communication refraction: Why and how the company you keep matters so much.” The talk is scheduled for December 6th (Friday) from noon to 1:00 pm in Skinner 0200.

About Dr. Rimal:

“Rajiv N. Rimal, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Rimal is a leading expert on health behavior change and on social norms. His research focuses on the use of social and behavioral theory for disease prevention and harm reduction. Rimal has more than 25 years of experience in the conceptualization, implementation and evaluation of health promotion interventions throughout the world. He is the author of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior, which has informed work to reduce violence against women, improve driver safety among adolescents, reduce anemia among women, and study alcohol consumption among college students. This theory is also being used in numerous interventions to bring about social change.

Rimal’s current research includes a project in India, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that uses a social norms-based approach to design, implement and evaluate an intervention to reduce anemia among women of reproductive age. Another study investigates how structural changes in health clinics affect service uptake in developing countries. He is also leading studies that aim to understand how people with different political orientations process information about climate change and how mass media and social media can influence people’s attitudes and behaviors related to climate change.

Rimal has served as chair of the Health Communication divisions of both the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association. He was a recipient of the American Public Health Association’s Everett M. Rogers Award for Public Health Education and Health Promotion.

Rimal received a PhD in communication from Stanford University in 1995 and a Master of Arts in journalism and mass communication at Southern Illinois University in 1991.”