Alan Stacy

Alan W. Stacy is a professor at Claremont Graduate University’s School of Community and Global Health (SCGH). Stacy was one of the first to apply basic research on automatic memory processes, multiple memory systems in the brain, and implicit cognition to health habits and addiction. He co-edited the first book on Implicit Cognition and Addiction. This approach has spawned many studies on implicit cognition in health behavior and helps explain why so many people engage in behaviors that are habit forming but harmful in the long run.

Stacy received his doctorate in social and personality psychology, with a health psychology focus, from the University of California, Riverside. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Washington and the University of Southern California and held positions at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, where he was full professor with tenure in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine. He moved to Claremont Graduate University in 2008 as professor and associate dean of faculty affairs. In 2018, he became interim dean for SCGH.

His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for many years. As examples, he has been principal investigator (PI) on eight previous NIH RO1 projects and a large NIH P50 center translating basic research to health behavior and addictions. He has been co-PI on previous successful preventive intervention trials on drug and tobacco use (recommended for widespread use by NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and co-investigator on several neural imaging projects studying habit processes.

His most recent NIH-funded randomized trial found support for a new preventive electronic intervention on reducing infection risk and increasing screening in drug users at risk for hepatitis b/c and HIV. His most recent epidemiologic study (funded by the Food and Drug Administration) has uncovered major causes of increases in electronic tobacco use and opioid use among at-risk youth in a large 3-year cohort study. He has also conducted research on dietary interventions and electronic habit change modalities (via laptops and internet devices such as tablet computers and cell phones) and seeks to expand his approach to interventions on physical activity. His NIH grants have resulted in a diverse range of publications in peer reviewed scientific journals across fields of behavioral medicine, preventive medicine, public health, and psychology. A few examples are: Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Health Psychology, American Journal of Public Health, Pediatrics, Social Science and Medicine, Addiction, Addiction Biology, Behavioural Brain Research, Psychological Assessment, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. Other examples are shown on the National Library of Medicine website.