Profile

Autumn Shafer is a native of the Pacific Northwest. Her research seeks to address important social, theoretical, and practical issues related to public health promotion and social issues advocacy. She has a student-centered approach to teaching and seeks to create a collaborative and inclusive classroom environment where students feel both challenged and supported as they learn.

Her research has included grant-funded projects creating an inherited cancer risk study recruitment campaign, developing a sexual consent awareness campaign, encouraging parents of children with eating disorders to take care of themselves to prevent caregiver fatigue, and cervical cancer prevention through the promotion of HPV vaccines.

Shafer’s professional experience includes being a political campaign manager, field director, and legislative aide in Washington state. As a campaign manager and a field director overseeing several campaigns, she gained experience in public relations writing, print and video advertisement design and buying, online outreach, fundraising, crisis communication, political field research, and strategic campaign management. As a state legislative aide for four sessions, she understands the legislative process and has experience in governmental public information dissemination including media, agency, and constituent relations. She has successfully managed policy and budgetary legislation from development with community and policy stakeholders through both legislative chambers to the governor’s desk.

Shafer has led two summer study-abroad classes to London with a focus on public relations and media culture. The nature of her research lends itself to working in collaborative multidisciplinary teams that  frequently are not place based, and she has collaborated with researchers in social sciences, public health, and medicine who are located all over the world.