Dr. Quinn's research concentrates on assessing the behavioral determinants of consumer decisions and choices about health. The goals of this research are to understand the barriers and benefits, as seen by the consumer, and to use these data to promote health care choices. Dr. Quinn is director of the National Training Collaborative for Social Marketing, a cooperative venture of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) that trains health care professionals in the field of social marketing. Social marketing is the application of traditional marketing principles to promotion of voluntary behavior change for the benefit of the consumer.
Dr. Quinn's recent research focus has been interdisciplinary investigations that seek to gain a qualitative understanding of a consumer's perspective regarding health decisions and the physician patient communication process. Current projects include the study of discussions of fertility preservation among newly diagnosed cancer patients, the use of social marketing to explore percpetions of genetic testing among high risk Hispanic women, preventing smoking relapse among pregnant and postpartum women, determining the barriers to patient accrual to clinical trials in a cancer hospital setting, and a study to determine the barriers to access and utilization of perinatal health care systems.