News and Highlights
June 2009
Faculty Promotion
Kenneth W. Griffin, PhD, MPH, was promoted to Professor of Public Health in the Division of Prevention and Health Behavior. Dr. Griffin's research focuses on the etiology and prevention of substance use and HIV risk behaviors among adolescents and young adults. He has studied how social competence and effective self-regulation strategies act as protective factors that reduce risky behaviors among young people. His work has also focused on the design, implementation, and evaluation of preventive intervention programs, the mechanisms through which effective programs work, and the long-term prevention effects on risky behaviors. Dr. Griffin has published over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and 20 book chapters on these topics. His research has been supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse; currently, he is the Principal Investigator on an R01 grant and an R21 grant. Dr. Griffin has significantly contributed to teaching, mentoring, and supervising students in the Medical College and the K30 Master’s Program in Clinical Investigation, for which he designed and teaches a course on survey research methods. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD in psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Prior to joining Cornell, Dr. Griffin spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the Department of Psychiatry and the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. As a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, he earned an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Griffin received the Early Career Award for outstanding contributions to prevention science from the Society for Prevention Research in 2002.
