For USF College of Public Health (COPH) professor Dr. Claudia Parvanta, receiving the 2026 Vicki Freimuth Award for Excellence in Health Communication was more than a recognition of her career, it honored the legacy of a colleague she knew well.
The Society for Health Communication presented Parvanta with the award during its annual summit in August. Established in 2025 in memory of Dr. Vicki Freimuth, the award recognizes an individual whose career has advanced public health through scientific health communication, leadership and mentorship.
According to the society, Freimuth, who passed away in 2024, was an internationally recognized innovator in health communication who played a key role in connecting public health practice and research with communication studies. She served as associate director for communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where she helped transform the agency’s approach to communication.
For Parvanta, the recognition carries special significance.
“I’m truly humbled that my colleagues chose to make me the honoree this year,” Parvanta said.
Parvanta worked closely with Freimuth during her time at the CDC, where Parvanta led the Division of Health Communication in the Office of the Director from 2000 to 2005. During the award presentation, Dr. Glen Nowak, who led communications for the National Immunization Program at CDC and is now associate dean for research and graduate studies at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, noted that as the years pass, fewer health communication professionals will have had the opportunity to work directly with Freimuth.
“I worked very closely with Vicki at CDC for about five years, so the award is particularly meaningful to me,” Parvanta said.
Claudia Parvanta, PhD, MA (Photo courtesy of Parvanta)
Finding her place in health communication
Parvanta’s path to health communication began with anthropology. While in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, she realized she wanted to do more than study people and write about her findings; she wanted to apply what she learned about culture and behavior in ways that could help people.
Her interests in human biology, medical anthropology, nutritional anthropology - with a creative kick - eventually led her to social marketing.
“When I discovered social marketing, I felt I had found the perfect fit for all my interests,” she said.
That discovery helped shape a career spanning public health practice, academia and health communication around the world. Parvanta has led health communication efforts at the CDC, collaborated with Morehouse School of Medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic and worked on health communication initiatives in communities in the U.S. and abroad.
Today, she is a professor in the COPH’s Department of Health Policy and Systems Management, director of the USF Center for Social Marketing and co-director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Social Marketing and Social Change to Address Non-Communicable Diseases.
While the ways people communicate have changed throughout her career, Parvanta said the principles behind effective health communication remain consistent.
“We need to begin by listening to the intended ‘audience’ and co-create communications with them,” she said. “Understanding behavior and its drivers comes first.”
Preparing the next generation
Mentoring future public health professionals has also become an important part of Parvanta’s work at USF.
Through the Center for Social Marketing, she works alongside students on projects that allow them to put health communication and social marketing principles into practice. Recent projects under her direction have focused on college student vaping, pediatric vaccines and cultural tailoring for dengue communication, giving students opportunities to help develop messaging and media.
“We always learn from our students and collaborating with them in the Center for Social Marketing is what makes it meaningful,” Parvanta said.
One graduate assistant recently told her that while reading the health communication chapter in the "Certified in Public Health: Exam Review Guide, 2nd edition," she could “hear” Parvanta’s voice, making the material easier to remember.
For Parvanta, that feedback reflects what she hopes students carry with them.
“I hope they take away the feeling that this work is fun, different, and important,” she said. “I learned so much working closely with Vicki Freimuth, who was both wise and kind. I literally ask myself, “what would Vicki do,” and try to pass those perspectives on to our students at USF.”