Deborah A. Fisher, PhD, Psychology
Research Scientist
The Calverton Center
Calverton, Maryland

Phone: (301) 755-2716
Fax: (301) 755-2799
Email: fisher@pire.org


Deborah A. Fisher received her doctorate in social psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and, since joining PIRE, has been involved in a wide array of projects including basic research, program evaluations, policy analyses, and the development of documents translating science to practice. She has a strong interest in developmental patterns in and influences on youth risk taking behaviors. Her research has focused in two main areas (1) traffic safety behaviors, including the effects of legal/policy measures, enforcement, responsible beverage service (RBS) training programs and other countermeasures on outcomes such as impaired driving and use of occupant restraints, and (2) adolescent risk taking, including drinking alcohol, tobacco use, media exposure and sexual risk taking.

In the traffic safety area, she is currently working on research that examines how the level of drinking and driving enforcement relates to impaired driving across 60 U.S. jurisdictions. She was part of a team of investigators that recently examined the effect on youth traffic fatalities of various provisions of States' underage drinking and impaired driving laws and was responsible for developing and applying a coding system to qualitatively assess the laws. She has conducted several evaluation studies of law enforcement and other community efforts to prevent alcohol, tobacco and other drug use and related problems. She was recently Project Manager of a NHTSA-funded evaluation of RBS/enhanced law enforcement interventions being implemented by two communities to reduce traffic crashes and other alcohol-related problems among 21- to 34-year olds. Dr. Fisher served as Principal Investigator of a NHTSA-funded project to examine whether the 70% by '92 public information/education and law enforcement program undertaken in the early 1990s was effective in increasing seat belt usage.

During her tenure at PIRE, Dr. Fisher has also been active in developing technical assistance documents for States and communities on a variety of public health and safety issues affecting youth, including problem identification and referral, alcohol problems on college campuses, prevention of youth access to tobacco, and environmental prevention strategies. More recently, she has developed several monographs for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that provide critical reviews and summaries of the literature on substance abuse among 18- to 25-year olds, alcohol-interpersonal violence, and methamphetamine.