Brief Biography
Dr. Christine Hunter is the Acting Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and Acting Director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In these roles, she supports the OBSSR mission to enhance the impact of health-related behavioral and social sciences research, coordinate and integrate these sciences within the larger NIH research enterprise and communicate health-related behavioral and social sciences research findings. Christine is also a Captain in the U.S. Public Health Service. Previously she served as the Director of Behavioral Research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) where she built an innovative and diverse behavioral science portfolio focused on diabetes and obesity research. Dr. Hunter obtained her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from The University of Memphis and completed her psychology internship at Wilford Hall Medical Center in 1997. She completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical Health Psychology in 2001 and was Board Certified in Clinical Health Psychology in 2005 by the American Board of Professional Psychology. Prior to joining NIDDK in 2006, she served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force for ten years in a variety of clinical, management, research, and policy positions. Dr. Hunter's research interests span the translational spectrum and include an emphasis on advancing behavioral ontology development and the application of rigorous but varied methods and designs in the behavioral and social sciences. With the goal of developing and testing more targeted and efficacious health behavior change interventions, she’s interested in research to uncover mechanisms of behavior change, understand individual differences in treatment response, and translate basic science findings into meaningful human application. She is also interested in implementation science to more rapidly advance the reach, uptake, adaptation, and scale up of effective approaches to improve health and mental health into routine care, community settings, and public health practice.
