Rate My Professor Philip Massey

Dr. Philip M. Massey, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He earned his PhD in Public Health and MPH in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his BS in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to his current role, Dr. Massey held a faculty position at Drexel University School of Public Health in the Department of Community Health and Prevention. There, he led a state-level evaluation of programs targeting the prevention of prescription drug misuse and alcohol use among youth in Pennsylvania. In this capacity, he trained state agencies and county officials in prevention science, program planning, evaluation, and developed data briefs on overdose prevention services, marijuana landscape changes, and firearm safety for suicide prevention.

Dr. Massey's health communication scholarship focuses on media and technology in the U.S. and globally, employing mixed-methods approaches to study health and media literacy across multiple media environments. His research examines social media patterns and shifts in public opinion toward HPV vaccination on Twitter and Instagram, message types related to reach and impact, and narrative engagement and storytelling for cancer prevention messages targeting parents about the HPV vaccine, extended to alcohol recovery. Globally, he has investigated media effects on health knowledge and attitudes through storytelling and digital media in West Africa. Additional contributions characterize dimensions of internet and social media misinformation, supporting tailored interventions. Key publications include 'Health literacy, digital health literacy, and COVID-19 pandemic attitudes and behaviors in U.S. college students: implications for interventions' (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021), 'Dimensions of misinformation about the HPV vaccine on Instagram: Content and network analysis of social media characteristics' (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2020), 'Applying multiple data collection methods to quantify HPV vaccine communication on Twitter' (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2016), 'The Twitter origins and evolution of the COVID-19 “plandemic” conspiracy theory' (Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 2020), and 'Contextualizing an expanded definition of health literacy among adolescents in the health care setting' (Health Education Research, 2012).