Leviton, Laura

(b. 1951, Chicago, Illinois). Ph.D. Psychology, University of Kansas; Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University; M.A. Psychology, University of Kansas; B.A. Psychology, Reed College.

Leviton is a Senior Program Officer for Research and Evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Previously, she was on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh and University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Leviton has contributed to evaluation theory, practice, and the profession in four different areas: (a) her evaluations of community-based health and social service programs; (b) coauthoring the widely used text Foundations of Program Evaluation, with William R. Shadish and Thomas D. Cook; (c) conducting one of the earliest HIV prevention evaluations and, to date, still the largest randomized experiment evaluating methods to encourage safer sexual practices in gay and bisexual men; and (d) her published works on evaluation utilization in education.

Among the many people who have influenced her work in evaluation are Gloria Ladieu Leviton, Charles A. Kiesler, Donald Campbell, Jack W. Brehm, Thomas D. Cook, Robert F. Boruch, Beaufort Longest, Jr., Russell G. Schuh, Thomas Allen Bruce, and Mary Guinan.

She was President of the American Evaluation Association in 2000 and AEA Board Member from 1999 to 2001, coeditor of a special issue of Public Health Reports concerning the CDC's HIV community-based prevention activities, and a contributing author to a wide range of evaluation journals and books. She has served on the National Institutes of Mental Health's Mental Health, AIDS and Immunology Review Committee and the NIH Study Section for Review of HIV/AIDS Prevention Research, the CDC National Advisory Committee on HIV and STD Prevention, and was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee to Evaluate the Metropolitan Medical Response Systems Program of the Department of Health and Human Services (preparedness for biological, chemical, or radiological terrorist attack).

Leviton received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Association in 1993 and the Edgar Hayhow Award of the American College of Healthcare Executives for article of the year in Hospital and Health Services Administration in 1987. She was a W. K. Kellogg National Fellow from 1981 to 1984.