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Dr. Mia Liza Lustria Assistant Professor Phone: 850-644-6237 Fax: 850-644-6253 Email: mlustria@ci.fsu.edu

Mia Liza A. Lustria (Assistant Professor) earned her BS and MS in Development Communication from the University of the Philippines and her PhD in Health Communication at the University of Kentucky. Before joining FSU, she taught for 10 years at the College of Development Communication at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and was also an affiliate faculty of the University of the Philippines Open University. She has extensive experience in designing, implementing and evaluating health communication and education campaigns in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States and growing experience in the area of consumer health informatics.

As faculty of the College of Development Communication, she spearheaded the design and production of culturally-sensitive health communication materials for a variety of audiences including women, farmers, and healthcare providers. Through a grant from the Philippine Department of Health, she was involved in the development of 11 training modules on family planning and reproductive health designed for rural healthcare providers. She was also involved as affiliate faculty of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs in providing several training workshops to local rural healthcare providers on Strategic Communication for Family Health. She has also served as a resource person in close to 50 training workshops on health, scientific and technical communication and publications production for a variety of audiences including public servants, health providers, and laymen in Southeast Asia.

While pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Lustria spent three years working on a $3 million NIH grant to develop, implement and evaluate a televised, mass media, public service announcement (PSA) campaign aimed to increase safer sexual behaviors in young adults in two cities. These PSAs were tailored to the target audience in various ways, and were grounded in theories of personality and health behavior. Dr. Lustria assisted with the overall conduct (implementation and evaluation) of the research project; conducted focus group interviews; and helped design televised public service announcements for HIV/STD prevention, specifically targeted towards high risk young adults.

Her interest in the area of consumer health informatics is grounded on her training in information science and health communication, as well as experience and interest in information seeking behaviors, information architecture, and the design of online health interventions. Her initial foray into this area started with her dissertation, which was funded through several grants including a Jacobs Foundation IT Dissertation Award, and the Eugene Garfield Dissertation Fellowship. The goal of this project was to examine the effects of different levels of interactivity of a website on the comprehension of a health topic (skin cancer) and to determine whether individual differences moderated such an effect. Her dissertation manuscript, which is published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, outlines the implications of the research findings on the design of health websites.

1. Systematic Review of Online Health Interventions (FSU First Year Assistant Professor grant/ Principal Investigator) – a systematic review of research studying the efficacy of Internet-based health interventions on health outcomes
   
   
2. Effects of Computer Tailoring on Elaboration of Health Content (FSU-CRC Planning Grant and NSF Research Experiences for Undergrads/ Principal Investigator) – involves the design and evaluation of a computer-tailored site on safer sex designed for adolescents. The research team will be testing the effects of computer-tailoring on the elaboration and comprehension of the online content by adolescents with different competencies and skills.
   
   
3. Participatory Design & Evaluation of STEER: A Clinic-Based Tool to Help Health Providers Support Breast Cancer Care Needs in Rural Florida (Florida Department of Health, Bankhead Coley Cancer Research Program/ Principal Investigator) - This three-year study is funded through a $348,000 grant involving the design and evaluation of an informatics system to support rural healthcare providers’ capacities to provide timely referrals for breast cancer screening and adjuvant therapies in rural Florida.

In addition, Dr. Lustria is also building her expertise in: (a) diabetes and behavioral cancer control research and health education campaigns through various research projects on: diabetes risk assessment (e.g., evaluation of Diabetes P.H.D. with the American Diabetes Association; a review of online health interventions for diabetes for the journal, Journal of Diabetes Science & Technology); (b) cancer information seeking (e.g., analysis of the Health Information National Trends Survey; analysis of the Cancer Information Service Livehelp Sessions; analysis of information needs and seeking behaviors of patients with various disabilities); (c) patient navigator interventions for cancer (e.g., evaluation of a local patient navigation intervention through a grant with the American Cancer Society); (d) use of Web 2.0 technologies for health communication (e.g., analysis of exchange of personal health information online via PatientsLikeMe.com), and (e) health literacy issues, (e.g., assessment of training needs of public librarians on consumer health information and health literacy funded through the Florida Electronic Library), among others.