Award for Distinguished Senior Career Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest: Perry N. Halkitis.

The Awards for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest recognize persons who have advanced psychology as a science and/or profession by a single extraordinary achievement or a lifetime of outstanding contributions in the public interest. Two awards are given: one to a senior psychologist and a second to a psychologist who has made a significant contribution to the public interest in the early stages of his or her career. The 2020 recipients of the APA Awards for Distinguished Contributions in the Public Interest were selected by the 2019 Committee on Psychology in the Public Interest Awards. Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH, is a public health psychologist, researcher, educator, and advocate who is dean and professor of biostatistics and urban-global public health at the Rutgers School of Public Health. Halkitis is Founder and Director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies. For three decades, his program of research has examined the intersection between HIV, human papillomavirus and other sexually transmitted infections, drug abuse, and mental health burden, with regard to the biological, behavioral, psychosocial, and structural factors that predispose these and other health disparities in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, queer, and other populations. His work focuses on the translation of this knowledge through implementation science research that examines the effectiveness of tailored and adaptive interventions in order to prevent and eliminate these disparities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).