Professor McDermott received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1981 to 1986, he was a faculty member in the Department of Health Education, at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Dr. McDermott came to the University of South Florida College of Public Health in 1986, and was Chair of the Department of Community and Family Health from 1993 to 2003.
In 1998, he oversaw a College-wide effort that successfully lead to USF being awarded one of the Prevention Research Centers by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is Director of this Center. In 2002 he received the William A. Howe M.D. Award from the American School Health Association for his career achievements, the highest award bestowed by that organization. In addition, he is the current (2003-04) President of the American Academy of Health Behavior. Dr. McDermott received the 1997 Award for Research of the American School Health Association's Research identified through nominations of peers to be a founding fellow of the American Academy for Health Behavior. The American Association for Health Education named him its Scholar for 1999, and he is a past recipient of that Association's Mabel Lee Award for early career achievements.
Among his other activities, Dr. McDermott has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's invited working group on defining Health Education in the 21st Century, a Visiting Professor at the University of Cologne (Germany) and at the University of Freiburg (Germany), and consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's, Division of Adolescent and School Health, for collaboration with the Russian Federation. In addition to his more that 125 scientific articles, his latest book, Health Education Evaluation and Measurement - A Practitioner's Perspective, was recently published by WCB McGraw-Hill.
