Donna Vallone oversees Legacy’s portfolio of internal, contract and grant-funded research and evaluation studies. Her specific research interest focuses on tobacco-related health disparities. She is an active member and a funder of the Tobacco-Related Health Disparities Research Network (TReND), a trans-disciplinary organization with the mission of eliminating tobacco-related disparities by translating scientific knowledge into practice and informing public policy. In 2006, Dr. Vallone served as co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, which focused on tobacco control policy and women of low-socioeconomic status. Dr. Vallone serves on numerous expert panels and evaluation advisory committees including the expert panel on the evaluation of the national youth anti-drug media campaign from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Evaluation Task Force for the Tobacco Control Section of the California Department of Health.
Dr. Vallone’s recent peer-reviewed publications include "Assessing the Impact of the National truth Antismoking Campaign on Beliefs and Attitudes by Race/Ethnicity" (Ethnicity and Health, (forthcoming); “The Importance of Location for Tobacco Cessation: Rural-Urban Disparities in Quit Success in Underserved West Virginia Counties” (J Rural Health. 2008 Spring); “How Reliable and Valid is the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS-4) for Youth of Various Racial/Ethnic Groups?” (Addiction, Oct. 2007); “Women's Knowledge of the Leading Causes of Cancer Death” (Nicotine and Tobacco Research, July, 2007); “Televised Movie Trailers: Undermining Restrictions on Advertising Tobacco to Youth” (Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Sept., 2006), and “Smoking, Obesity, and their Co-occurrence in the United States: Cross Sectional Analysis” (British Medical Journal, July, 2006).
Dr. Vallone received her Masters’ Degree in International Community Health Education from New York University and her Doctoral Degree in Sociomedical Sciences, an interdisciplinary degree combining public health and sociology, from Columbia University.