Jackelyn B. Payne, PhD, MPH, MA

Jackelyn (Jackie) Payne, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.A., is a Cancer Prevention Fellow in the Office of the Associate Director of the Behavioral Research Program.

Working at the intersection of psychology, public health, and medicine, Dr. Payne's work focuses on medical decision-making in the context of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Using mixed methods, she studies how and why patients make decisions about their cancer treatment, including decisions about participating in clinical trials. In addition, she is interested in how clinicians make decisions for their patients and incorporate evidence-based decisions with patient preferences, as well as how treatment decisions affect cancer survivors' well-being over time.

Dr. Payne began researching health behavior as an undergraduate research assistant for the Women's Health Research Team at the College of Charleston. After receiving her B.A. in public health and B.S. in anthropology, she attended Emory University, where she received her M.P.H. in behavioral sciences and health education. She then worked as a researcher at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health and the School of Medicine. She oversaw the development and coordination of several research studies, including a behavioral intervention with adolescent and young adult cancer survivors and a multi-year longitudinal study of tobacco, alternative tobacco, and marijuana use in college students throughout Georgia. Dr. Payne was also the lead coordinator for a longitudinal epidemiological study of lymphoma patients and conducted the first qualitative research within the lymphoma program at Emory. Following this work in a predominantly clinical setting, Dr. Payne switched fields to health psychology and earned her doctoral degree from Stony Brook University's social and health psychology program in 2023.