Bettina received both her M.A. in experimental psychology and her M.S. in statistics from the University of Rhode Island, and her B.S. in Psychology with minors in Biology and Philosophy from Suffolk University, Boston.  She is currently a National Research Service Award (NRSA) pre-doctoral fellow in psychology (behavioral science concentration) at the University of Rhode Island.  Her pre-doctoral training and research has focused on addressing methodological challenges in health behaviors research.

At the Cancer Prevention Research Center, Bettina collaborated on numerous population-based health behavior change projects, focusing on a variety of health behaviors (e.g., smoking, condom-use, sun-screen use, exercise, diet, alcohol use, etc.) in diverse populations (e.g., HIV at-risk minority women, beach-goers, parents of high-school students, etc.) that were reached in a variety of settings (e.g., schools, communities, health-care clinics, etc.).  Her work in this area has specifically focused on: (1) investigating the efficacy of expert-system based interventions for increased condom-use, (2) identifying predictors of retention of HIV at-risk participants in longitudinal prevention studies, (3) delineating the process-to-outcome mechanisms underlying the adoption of safer sun behaviors to prevent skin cancer, (4) confirming well-understood processes of change instrumental in the cessation of smoking, and (5) exploring the dimensions of the less-understood processes of change underlying the acquisition of smoking.  Based on this work, she has presented numerous papers at health-oriented professional meetings, nationally and internationally.