About

Picture of Dr. Patterson, feminine-appearing person, short red hair, blue eyes in a black blazer and shirt

Joanne G. Patterson, PhD, MPH, MSW (she/her/hers)

Joanne G. Patterson (she/her hers) is an NIH NCI-funded Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion at The Ohio State University (OSU) College of Public Health (PI: R00CA260718).  She previously trained as part of a T32 in Cancer Prevention and Control at OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute.

Dr. Patterson is a behavioral scientist whose research program aims to reduce cancer inequities, with a special focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) populations. Her research applies multilevel and intersectionality frameworks to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of culturally tailored interventions to reduce behavioral cancer risks among minoritized LGBTQ+ populations. She is especially interested in tobacco and alcohol use, cancer screening, and upstream socioeconomic factors, including food insecurity. Her research interests are informed by the decade she spent training and practicing as a public health social worker in Boston, MA.

Dr. Patterson applies mixed methods to her experimental and implementation studies to qualitatively explore how context and culture affect participant engagement with behavioral interventions, experimental findings, and intervention implementation and adoption. She is an expert in qualitative data collection and analysis, including rapid data analytic methods, thematic analysis, and content analysis. 

At OSU, Dr. Patterson collaborates on multiple studies in health communications and marketing, which have been funded by the National Cancer Institute and The Ohio State University James Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is currently funded by a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Career Development Award (R00CA260718) to examine the effect of exposure to culturally tailored tobacco public education messages on dual use of nicotine vapes and combustible cigarettes among LGBTQ+ young adults. She is also Co-I on The Ohio State University Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science to assess the effect of marketing on uptake of oral nicotine pouches, and their addiction potential among LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ young people (U54CA287392; MPIs: Wagener and Shields; Role: Co-I Project 4). Recent pilot studies include a quantitative study of young adult LGBTQ women’s perceptions of e-cigarette harms messages (PI: Wagener) and an online experimental study investigating how e-cigarette advertising features influence risk perception and purchase intentions among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ young adults (PI: Stevens). Each of these studies will inform interventions to decrease tobacco use in high-risk LGBTQ groups.

Dr. Patterson’s community-engaged work aims to build organizational capacity to implement evidence-based interventions to reduce behavioral cancer risks among LGBTQ+ populations. She recently partnered with Equitas Health to conduct a mixed-methods formative program evaluation to develop patient-focused LGBTQ+ culturally tailored smoking cessation materials for use in behavioral and primary care settings. She is currently co-leading an LGBTQ+ community health needs assessment in partnership with Columbus Public Health and the OSU Center for Health Outcomes, Policy, and Evaluation Studies. 

Dr. Patterson integrates her experience in research and practice in the classroom. Using case-based teaching and flipped classroom methods, Dr. Patterson fosters teaching environments that creatively engage students in real-world public health problems while achieving public health competencies. She is convinced that public health teaching and practice is stronger when informed by transdisciplinary expertise and approaches, and she is thrilled to teach students from a wide range of disciplines (e.g., social work, sociology, psychology, nursing, pre-med, veterinary medicine) in her public health courses.

Dr Patterson believes that, “Being an effective teacher requires first and foremost learning how to be an effective teacher and then repeatedly relearning how to be an effective teacher.” – Jessamyn Neuhaus, Geeky Pedagogy  As such, she is interested using academic evaluation to foster continuous course improvement while making scholarly contributions to public health education praxis.

This website serves both to highlight Dr. Patterson’s current research and to share her reflections on academic life and professional development.