Dr. Belinda Borrelli, PhD is Professor and Director of The Center for Behavioral Science Research at Boston University, in the Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. She is also the PI and Director of BU's Mobile and Electronic Health-ARC. In 2013, she was invited to be a Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester, UK., and continues in that role. She was formally a Professor at Brown University, in both the School of Public Health and the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, and since transitioning to BU, maintains an adjunct Professorship at Brown. Dr. Borrelli received her MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and completed her residency and fellowship training in Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at Brown University. She proceeded through the academic ranks at Brown University and became Full Professor there in 2009.
Dr. Borrelli is a Clinical Psychologist specializing in motivating behavior change, with over 150 peer-reviewed publications. She has held over 25+ NIH grant awards as PI and Co-I, and numerous grant awards from other agencies and foundations. Over the past 25+ years, Prof. Borrelli’s research has focused on developing and testing treatments to motivate smoking and vaping cessation and secondhand smoke reduction, improving oral health and dietary behaviors, and promoting adherence to medications and treatment regimens for chronic diseases including sleep apnea, cystic fibrosis, and asthma. She specializes in integrating theory based treatments into public health contexts, and targeting underserved populations such as those with low income, inner city youth and adults, Latinos, people with mobility impairments, medically ill populations, older adults, and Native-Americans. Dr. Borrelli is also developing and testing mobile health platforms to initiate and sustain health behavior change (text messaging, mobile apps, Virtual Reality).
Dr. Borrelli has served on grant review panels in the US, Europe, and the UK and is a Fellow of the American College of Reviewers. She served as an advisor to the NIH on treatment fidelity, for both NIDCR and NHLBI, and has published several invited articles on best practice guidelines that have been widely disseminated. She provided expert testimony to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) on motivating health behavior change. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, The Society of Behavioral Medicine, and The Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco. Dr. Borrelli is a member of several journal editorial boards. She has been Associate Editor or Senior Associate Editor at leading journals in psychology (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and Health Psychology) and the most cited journal in addiction science (Addiction). She Co-Edited a special issue of Health Psychology on mHealth and eHealth interventions. She is currently Associate Editor of "American Psychologist," the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association. She has taught Motivational Interviewing to health care practitioners in the US and abroad, and has given over 100 invited talks nationally and internationally. She was named "TEDMED Research Scholar" in 2015. In 2017, she received BU's Research Collaborator of the Year award, from the Office of Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research & The Evans Center. She served as primary mentor to over 40 interns, post-docs, and NIH K award recipients.