Prevention and Control Research Program: Cancer Research Center of Hawai‘i

Hye-Ryeon Lee, PhD
	Associate Professor, Department of Speech Communication, College of Arts and Humanities; Member, Cancer Prevention and Control, Cancer Research Center of Hawai‘i; Member, Center for Korean Studies, School of Pacific and Asian Studies; Member, Population Studies; Cooperating Faculty, Office of Public Health Studies PhD (Communication), Stanford University hyeryeon@hawaii.edu

Dr. Hye-ryeon Lee is Associate Professor and Chair at Department of Speech Communication at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She teaches and conducts research in the area of health communication. Her research focuses on investigating normative influences in the context of health: How people form perceptions about social norms regarding health behaviors, and how these perceptions influence their own health behaviors in the end.

The process through which individuals decide to adopt or to give up behaviors that affect their health is complicated, with various personal, social, environmental factors exerting influence. One of the key components is perception about social norms for various health behaviors. Although the decision for adopting or giving up a health behavior ultimately rests with individuals, their decisions are heavily influenced by what people believe to be a socially acceptable course of action. Communication plays an important role in the normative influence process since norms are formed, reformed, and maintained through human communication (both interpersonal and mass-mediated). Her research endeavors represent an effort to further our understanding of the role of communication in normative influence processes. While there are various factors that affect normative influence in the health context, her research focuses on the three most important factors: policy, culture, and mass media.

Much of her research is conducted in combination with actual communication interventions that are set in the community setting. Through evaluation of interventions that are designed using theories of social influence to influence social norms related to a health behavior, she seeks to learn and understand how various intervention components influence relevant perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, thus furthering theoretical understanding of the normative influence process.

Dr. Lee has worked on various intervention projects to assess effectiveness of community-based interventions for tobacco, youth violence and HIV prevention in California, Arizona and Hawai‘i. Tobacco control and prevention has been an important focus of her research since 1994. She has directed many research projects in tobacco use prevention as well as in cessation, working with diverse types of populations including children, young adults, Korean immigrants, and general public in California, Arizona and Hawai‘i.

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Selected Publications

Eisenberg, M., Lopez, D., & Lee, H.-R. (2007). Tobacco policy regression in Arizona worksites. American Journal of Health Promotion, 22(1), 21-24.

Levy, D., Ross, H., Powel, L., Bauer, J., & Lee, H.-R. (2007). The role of public policies in reducing smoking prevalence and deaths caused by smoking in Arizona: Results from the Arizona Tobacco Policy Simulation Model. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 13(1), 59-67.

Ross, H., Powell, L.M., Bauer, J.E., Levy, D.T., Peck, R., & Lee, H.-R. (2006). Community-Based Youth Tobacco Control Interventions: Cost- Effectiveness of the Full Court Press Project. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 5(3), 167-176.

Lee, H.-R., Hubbard, A.E., O'Riordan, C.K, and Kim, M.-S. (2006). Incorporating culture into the theory of planned behavior: Predicting smoking cessation intentions among college students. Asian Journal of Communication, 16(3), 315-332.

Nofziger, S., & Lee, H.-R. (2006). Differential association impacts on daily smoking of adolescents: The importance of same sex models. Youth and Society, 37, 453-478.

Levy, D., Bauer, J., & Lee, H.-R. (2006). Simulation modeling and tobacco control: Creating more robust public health policies. American Journal of Public Health, 96, 494-498.