Jessie Gruman

Jessie Gruman (born December 7, 1953) is a prominent voice in the movement to incorporate evidence into health care and to help consumers adopt healthier behaviors. Gruman is the founder and president of the Washington-based Center for the Advancement of Health. She is the author of AfterShock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You -- or Someone You Love -- a Devastating Diagnosis. (Walker, 2007) She lives in New York City.

Gruman was born in Berea, Kentucky, and graduated from Vassar College in 1975 with a with a BA in English. She received a PhD in social psychology from Columbia University in 1984. Her interest in psychology was sparked by her experience when she was treated for cancer at the University of Wisconsin Medical Center at the age of 20. Despite her life-threatening condition, she struggled to comply with treatments that would increase her chance of her recovery. This casual, irrational misbehavior in the face of extreme risk drives her interest in the complicated forces that influence how people act with regard to their health and health care.

In November 2007, Jessie Gruman will be Stephen Kellen Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany.

Career
Throughout her career, her understanding of these concerns has grown in each position she has held. From 1979 to 1984, she worked at the Greenwich House Counseling Center with substance abusers and their families. She implemented the innovative employee health promotion program, Total Life Concept (TLC) at the national headquarters of AT&T, Communications between 1984 and 1986. Gruman then managed the American Cancer Society's public education efforts directed toward adults from 1986 through 1988. This position led to the opportunity to set up the nation's largest tobacco control demonstration project, ASSIST (the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study) at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

In 1992, executives from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation recruited Gruman to lead a new Washington DC-based policy institute, the Center for the Advancement of Health. Its purpose was to promote a view of health that recognizes the influence of behavioral, social, economic and environmental factors on health and disease. Since that time, the Center has grown into a respected source of scientific evidence related to this view of health through its Health Behavior News Service, which covers new scientific developments for the international media. Gruman writes, speaks and is interviewed frequently about how people use scientific evidence when making decisions about their health and health care and what it means to be a health care consumer.

Board of Directors and Membership
Gruman currently serves as a member of the Advisory Panel on Medicare Education for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the US Department of Health and Human Services, and is a member of the boards of trustees of the National Health Council, the Public Health Institute, the Center for Information Therapy and the Sallan Foundation. She is also currently a member of the Advisory Board of the United States Cochrane Center, the Editorial Board, Annals of Family Medicine, and the Advisory Board of the American Psychosocial Oncology Society. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Awards
May 2006, President's Medal, George Washington University

April 2006, Executive in Residence, Vassar College

March 2006, Research!America Advocacy Award

May 2005, Honorary Doctorate in Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

April 2005, Society of Behavioral Medicine Leadership in Translation of Research to Practice Award

August 2001, American Psychological Association Outstanding Service to Division 38 (Health Psychology) Award

April 2000, Society of Behavioral Medicine Distinguished Service Award

April 2000, Society of Behavioral Medicine Fellow