Department of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health Faculty

Henry P. Cole,Ed.D.
Professor
859-323-5202
hcole@email.uky.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Early in his career he taught high school chemistry, physics, and general science. He was a medical laboratory technician in the U.S Army and later a clinical chemical laboratory and hemodialysis technician when the procedure was experimental and supported by Hartford Foundation grants. Since the age of 10 he has been a life-long part-time farmer.

In 1993 he was appointed as a United Nations, International Labor Organization (ILO) expert in behavioral safety and occupational injury prevention. As part of that assignment he studied at the Economic, Social, and Cultural Asian-Pacific (ESCAP) Development Program at the UN Headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand.

Research Interests

For the last 25 years his interdisciplinary research has focused on prevention of occupational injuries to mining, construction, hazardous waste, agricultural workers and health care professionals. His research begins with injury epidemiology to establish the prevalence and distribution of injuries across populations of workers and the identification of risk factors for these injury events. Based on this information community-based interventions are designed that combine environmental and engineering controls with behavioral and educational interventions to reduce exposure to specific occupational hazards. The theoretical basis for this approach is described in his 1997 chapter titled Stories to live by: A narrative approach to health-behavior research and injury prevention found in the Handbook of health behavior research methods: Vol. 4, edited by D. S. Gochman and published by Plenum. His international work in mine safety includes assignments in South Africa, Australia, and the Peoples Republic of China.

Henry Cole is a professor of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health, College of Public Health and Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky, College of Education where he taught educational psychology, applied learning theory and cognitive psychology, program evaluation, and instructional design for 33 years. He has an Ed.D in educational psychology and science education from the State University of New York at Buffalo and is an internationally recognized expert in teaching critical thinking skills through case materials and narrative psychology principles. Prior to coming to UK he was an educational researcher and assistant professor at Syracuse and Cornell Universities. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, American Public Health Association, American Society of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineers, and the National Institute for Farm Safety. He completed post-doctoral study in Injury Epidemiology at the University of Michigan.