James L. Knight Professor

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin at Madison
M.A., University of Wisconsin at Madison
B.A., University of Kentucky at Lexington

Professor Jane Brown teaches courses in health communication and communication research and theory and is responsible for the School's undergraduate honors program. She is also the director of the Academic Leadership Program at the UNC-CH Institute for Arts and Humanities. She has served as chair of the faculty council at UNC-Chapel Hill.

For three decades, Brown’s research has focused on the effects of the media on adolescents’ health. She is completing a five-year project, "Teen Media: The mass media and adolescents' sexual health," funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Previously, Brown was co-principal investigator on the National Television Violence study. She and students studied the effectiveness of antiviolence public service announcements produced by the cable television industry. She serves on a scientific advisory board for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Trojan Sexual Health Advisory Council. She also is a member of a NICHD scientific review panel and a member of the selection committee for the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars. (To learn more about the Teen Media study, go to: http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/teenmedia/ ).

Brown’s books include Sexual Teens, Sexual Media (Erlbaum, 2002) and The Media, Social Science and Social Policy for Children (Ablex, 1985). Her research has been published in journals in journalism and mass communication, adolescence and public health, including Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Journal of Early Adolescence, Journal of Adolescent Health and Pediatrics.

Office phone: (919) 962-4089
Office location: Carroll 360
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