Donna B. Jeffe, PhD

Donna B. Jeffe, PhD

Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medical Sciences, School of Medicine

Dr. Jeffe is the Director of the Health Behavior, Communication, and Outreach Core, a resource of the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences and Siteman Cancer Center. She studies social, psychological, and situation factors in relation to health-risk/health-promoting behaviors, and emotional adjustment to disease. She has expertise in survey development and validation, psychometrics, qualitative-research design and data analysis, and medical- and health-education program evaluations.

Her clinical research focuses on quality of life in cancer patients and cancer prevention and control in underserved groups. Spurred by a profound interest in reducing health disparities among racial/ethnic minorities, and in response to national calls to increase the diversity of the biomedical-research workforce, she is joint PI with Dr. Dorothy Andriole of a national cohort study seeking to identify factors associated with pursuit of and retention in biomedical-research careers among physicians from underrepresented minority groups.

Dr. Jeffe contributed to the development of questionnaires that have been translated into several languages and are used by investigators around the world, including the HEAR-QL, a quality-of-life measure for children and adolescents with hearing loss, and the OSAKA, a measure of physicians’ knowledge and attitudes about obstructive sleep apnea in adults and children. Findings from studies using these questionnaires have great potential for improving the quality of life of patients with hearing loss and improving the quality of care for patients with obstructive sleep apnea.