Jessica Fishman, Ph.D.
- Founding Director of the Message Effects Lab, Annenberg School for Communication
Jessica Fishman, PhD is a Perelman School of Medicine faculty member and the founding director of the Message Effects Lab, which was established in 2021 by Dean John L. Jackson at the Annenberg School for Communication. The Message Effects Lab collaborates with university research teams, domestic and foreign governments, plus non-profit organizations, such as the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO). The Message Effects Lab scientifically develops proven-effective, communication-based interventions that leverage psychology to change decisions and behavior.
Dr. Fishman is also the director of vaccination behavioral research at the Institute for RNA Innovation. Within the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award, she served as Co-Director of the Outcomes Measurement and Methods Core and helped teams apply theory-based, causal models that predict behavior with validated measures of psychological constructs. She applies qualitative and quantitative methods to identify the malleable, multi-level factors that allow research to understand, predict, and influence behavior.
Dr. Fishman won several awards for her book and other research. She received degrees from Stanford University (with University Honors and Departmental Distinction) and the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she also conducted her postdoctoral research.
New Institute Seeks A Remedy for Medical Misinformation
The Penn Medical Communication Research Institute brings together interdisciplinary researchers with a mission to improve medical communication and health literacy.
