Laura Balis, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the PIRE Louisville Center. She earned her PhD at Virginia Tech in Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise with an emphasis on behavioral and implementation science. Her research focuses on building community organizations’ capacity to implement evidence-based physical activity programs for diverse populations. She combines her scientific training with years of real-world public health experience. Her research philosophy is grounded in participatory methods, and her investigations seek solutions to simultaneously solve real-world problems and advance implementation science.
Dr. Balis’ areas of interest are 1) investigating and improving delivery agents’ capacity to identify, adapt, and deliver evidence-based programs, 2) identifying and testing implementation strategies to improve the uptake of policy and environment-level physical activity interventions, and 3) adapting and disseminating national physical activity guidelines, especially in low- to middle-income countries. She has received grant funding (including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture) to advance her research on adoption of healthy meeting interventions, adaptation and dissemination of physical activity guidelines in Ghana, and built environment physical activity and nutrition interventions to reduce obesity prevalence in rural areas. A complete list of her publications can be found here.
Dr. Balis serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Sciences and Extension. She and her colleagues are serving as guest editors for a special issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health focused on Dissemination and Implementation Science Methods and Measures for Physical Activity Interventions in Community Settings. Submission deadline is June 30, 2022. Please see the call for papers information.
