Celette Skinner, Ph.D.

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Celette Sugg Skinner, Ph.D., holds the Parkland Community Medicine Professorship at the UT Southwestern Medical Center. She is Professor and Interim Dean of the Peter O'Donnell Jr. School of Public Health and was previously the Inaugural Chair of the Department of Population & Data Sciences. In 2022, she served as President of the national organization of Population Health Leaders in Academic Medicine. 

A pioneer in computer-tailored communications, Dr. Skinner has spent more than 30 years developing and testing innovative behavior-change interventions, working primarily among traditionally underserved groups. Her recent work focuses on multilevel interventions that meaningfully use electronic health records to identify patients in need of intervention, use clinically collected information to generate and deliver algorithm-driven tailored interventions, and track intervention outcomes.  

Since 1994, when she was a member of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) first Working Group on Computerized Tailored Interventions, Dr. Skinner has been a frequently invited participant in NCI “think tanks” to address cancer prevention and disparities. In 2016, she was the only UT Southwestern faculty member to serve on the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel, working with a group to set national priorities for dissemination and implementation research. 

Dr. Skinner joined UT Southwestern in 2007 as Chief of the Division of Behavioral and Communication Sciences and as the founding Associate Director of Population Research for the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center. She previously served as Associate Director for Population Research for the Duke Cancer Institute. Before that, she was a member of the Siteman Cancer Center of Washington University in St. Louis (1993-1998) and the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center (1991-1993).

Dr. Skinner received an M.A. in Communications Research from The Wheaton Graduate School and a Ph.D. in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she serves as an Adjunct Professor and is a former member and Chair of the Public Health Foundation Board.