Dr. Lisa Powell is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Health Policy and Administration at University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health. She is also the Director of the Illinois Prevention Research Center in the Institute for Health Research and Policy and has been active in applied behavioral policy research for 20 years.
Dr. Powell has led numerous multidisciplinary research teams and is renowned nationally and internationally for he research contributions on assessing the importance of policy, economic, and environmental community factors (such as food prices, subsidies and taxes; access to food stores, fast-food restaurants, and facilities for physical activity; school-level policies; and food marketing) on food consumption and physical activity behaviors and as determinants of obesity, and prices, tobacco control polices and peer and family influences on smoking behaviors.
Dr. Powell has extensive econometric expertise and has assessed beverage consumption patterns and estimated the impact of food and beverage prices, including sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) prices and taxes on consumption, expenditures, and body weight outcomes using individual-level survey data and scanner data, including studies that have assessed differential price impacts for minority and low-income populations. Overall, this body of work is represented among more than 150 research publications and has produced numerous policy briefs and facts sheets to translate and disseminate her research findings for policymakers, various agencies and organizations, and community stakeholders.
Dr. Powell was awarded the UIC Researcher of the Year Award in Social Sciences for 2013. Her research has been funded as Principal Investigator by numerous federal (CDC, NIH, USDA, and the Social Science and Research Council of Canada) and other agencies such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Her research is focused on policy, economics and environmental community factors.