UAB’s Brian F. Geiger, Ed.D., to Receive Odessa Woolfolk Award

UAB Professor of Health Education Brian F. Geiger, Ed.D., will receive the 2009 Odessa Woolfolk Community Service Award. The award will be presented at a ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday, March 23, in the Alys Stephens Center’s Sirote Theatre.

   March 16, 2009

Brian Geiger. Download image.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - UAB Professor of Health Education Brian F. Geiger, Ed.D., will receive the 2009 Odessa Woolfolk Community Service Award. The award will be presented at a ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday, March 23, in the Alys Stephens Center's Sirote Theatre.

The award is named after Woolfolk who was the special assistant to the president for community relations until her retirement in 1993.

Geiger teaches in the UAB School of Education's Department of Human Studies and is assistant director of the UAB Center for Educational Accountability. He is a senior scientist in the UAB Center for the Study of Community Health and a scientist in both the UAB Center for Aging and the UAB Clinical Nutrition Research Center.

Through the years Geiger has worked with many state and local governments and agencies to address health issues in Alabama. He was a member of the State Obesity Task Force that was created to help reduce the incidence of obesity among children and adults and was an organizer for the Alabama Governor's Conference on Obesity 2006-2007. He also worked with school officials in Selma as a principal investigator for the Selma Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness Study for Students (NEWS), a study dedicated to finding ways to reduce childhood obesity in Selma.

Geiger currently is the lead principal investigator for a study to examine the healthcare needs of persons with developmental disabilities in Alabama. Data from the study will be used to create new programs to train consumers, students and healthcare professionals to work with the disabled.

Geiger has been a member of the Alabama Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Task Force and chairman and vice chairman of the Alabama Coalition for School Health. He was a board member of the American Association for Health Education and will be inducted as a Fellow later this month.

Geiger is a member of the Dental Advisory committee, a partnership between the UAB School of Dentistry and United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Birmingham. As a committee member, Geiger is assisting project administrators with developing a statewide plan to provide dental care to individuals with disabilities.

Geiger also has been an active community volunteer with a number of organizations. He has been a volunteer radio announcer with the Alabama Radio Reading Service at WBHM-FM and has volunteered with the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge and the Alabama Department of Public Health Volunteer Network.

He is a vice president of the board of directors for the Horizons School in Birmingham and a volunteer clinical coordinator with the Alabama Special Olympics Healthy Athletes Program.

Geiger earned his bachelor's degree from Tulane University in 1984, his master's degree in 1988 from Loyola University and his doctorate in health education administration from the University of South Carolina in 1993. He has been a member of the UAB faculty since 1993.