The Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine focuses on how to motivate people, communities and societies to live healthier lives.

The Institute, known as the Institute for Prevention Research, or IPR, brings together health psychologists, social scientists, public health specialists, medical scientists and scholars from many disciplines to study ways to help people live in good health and prevent disease.
Although the majority of the Institute’s faculty members are part of the Health Promotion Division of the Keck Department of Preventive Medicine, the Institute culls faculty from throughout the university, with more than 100 active members.

IPR Programs

Through exemplary research, education and intervention programs, IPR scientists focus on finding ways to encourage individuals and families to make lifestyle changes to promote health and prevent disease. On the community and cultural levels, researchers work to identify social norms that encourage unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as tobacco use, and to develop and test intervention programs to alter these social norms.

Institute investigators are exploring how culture, migration patterns and cultural assimilation affect health. Another focus is on improving communication techniques and public education programs to help narrow the gap between scientific discovery and public awareness.

IPR in the Community

Outreach remains a highest priority for IPR faculty. Without outreach efforts, up-to-date and accurate health information might never reach the community.

Institute Excellence

IPR faculty members have gained prominence in prevention research, especially in the context of community education and intervention programs. Pioneers of school and community based tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs, faculty members designed model programs now used across the nation.

Centers and Collaborations

Institute for Prevention Research faculty members work closely with the USC/Norris Cancer Center to run the Southern California component of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Information Service, a network that provides the latest cancer information free to the public via a phone hotline and outreach programs. The IPR also is home to the state’s Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Network and the NIH-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) and Transdisciplinary Drug Abuse Prevention Research Center (TPRC).