Ginger Cross
Dr. Ginger W. Cross
Assistant Research Professor, SSRC
Ph.D., Applied Cognitive Science, Mississippi State University
Email: Ginger.Cross@ssrc.msstate.edu
Phone: (662) 325-3092
Dr. Ginger W. Cross is an Assistant Research Professor for the Family and Children Research Unit (FCRU) of the Social Science Research Center (SSRC). She received her Ph.D. in Applied Cognitive Science from Mississippi State University in 2008. Her research interests are in the areas of health and safety.
In the area of health, Dr. Cross has served as a postdoctoral research fellow or PI on projects that have provided data to stakeholders and examined the effectiveness of policies or programs aimed at promoting and improving health and health education. Examples of these projects include: Mississippi KIDS COUNT, Evaluation of the Mississippi Healthy Students Act of 2007, and Evaluation of HealthWorks! North Mississippi.
The Mississippi KIDS COUNT program, funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, provides accurate and non-partisan data, statistics and original research on the health, education, safety and economic well-being of Mississippi’s children to policymakers, educators, program administrators, parents, caregivers, advocates, and the general public. This information is provided through an annual data book, summit, and project website.
The evaluation project for Mississippi’s 2007 Healthy Students Act, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (through the Center for Mississippi Health Policy), utilizes telephone surveys and interviews of parents, students, and policymakers to assess the effectiveness of the Healthy Students Act, which affected nutrition, physical education, and health education standards in Mississippi’s public schools.
Finally, the evaluation project for HealthWorks! North Mississippi, funded by the Health Care Foundation of North Mississippi, utilizes student pre- and post-tests and teacher satisfaction surveys to assess the effectiveness of field trip classroom programs offered at HealthWorks! North Mississippi, an interactive children’s health education center in Tupelo, MS.
In the area of safety, Dr. Cross has served as the PI or Co-PI on projects related to distracted driving and public safety. These projects have been funded by the Center for Mississippi Health Policy and the Mississippi Office of Highway Safety. In addition, her dissertation research focused on dual-task performance and was titled “The Impact of an Auditory Task on Visual Processing: Implications for Cellular Phone Usage While Driving.”
Prior to her appointment at the FCRU, Dr. Cross served as a Research Assistant for the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (MASEP) at the SSRC, an Instructor for the Department of Psychology at Mississippi State University (MSU), a Visiting Research Associate for the Engineering Research Center at MSU, and a Research Fellow for the U.S. Army Research Institute/Navy Personnel Research, Studies, and Technology (NPRST) in Millington, TN.
March 6, 2011
SSRC 2011 Annual Report
Click here to download the PDF version. Click here for the interactive online version.
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