M. Renée Umstattd Meyer, PhD, MCHES, FAAHB

Renée Umstattd Meyer is the Associate Dean for Research in Robbins College and a Professor in the Department of Public Health at Baylor University. She received her BSE in community health, graduating from the Honor’s program at Baylor University in 2000, MS in health promotion from the University of Mississippi in 2002, and PhD from the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in 2005. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the psychology of physical activity at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in 2006, served as faculty at the University of Alabama from 2006-2010, and joined the Baylor faculty in 2010.

Dr. Umstattd Meyer’s work focuses on promoting health and access to opportunities for healthy living through an active living lens. She collaborates with communities using mixed methods to understand cultural context and advance approaches and policies to foster healthy and active opportunities and lifestyles for all people. She focuses much of her work partnering with underserved rural communities and families, which has been supported by federal, foundation, and local sponsors. She leads the Rural Hub of the CDC-funded Physical Activity Policy Research and Evaluation Network (PAPREN) and is a Fellow and Past-President of the American Academy of Health Behavior, a multidisciplinary society of health behavior scholars and researchers.

Areas of Research Interest

• Physical Activity, Active Living, and Sedentary Behavior
• Advancing Access to Health Care, Quality, and Opportunities for Healthy Living among Underserved Communities, Specifically Rural Communities
• Community-engaged and Mixed-method Research
• Policy, Systems, and Environments

Current Courses Taught

• PUBH 6321, Advanced Theory & Practice in Behavioral Health I
• PUBH 3320, Stress Management & Mental Health