John Philip Allegrante (born March 8, 1952) is an American applied behavioral scientist and academic. He is the Charles Irwin Lambert Professor of Health Behavior and Education at Teachers College, the graduate school of education, health, and psychology at Columbia University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1979.
Early life and education
Allegrante was born at Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of John Ralph and Lois Elaine Allegrante, and grew up in Salt Point, a hamlet of Dutchess County, in New York's Hudson Valley.
He began his education in a one-room schoolhouse in Salt Point and later attended elementary, middle and high schools in the Hyde Park Central School District, graduating from Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in 1970. A first-generation college student, he initially attended a local community college and then went on to earn a B.S. degree in education with distinction from the State University of New York College at Cortland in 1974.
Academic biography
Following graduation from Cortland, he enrolled for graduate study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was funded as a graduate research and teaching assistant from 1974 to 1979, earning a M.S. degree in health education in 1976 and Ph.D. in health education and sociology in 1979. During his studies, Allegrante's father became seriously ill and the family ordeal of the cost of his father's hospitalization led him to write an essay about the impact of the high costs of medical care that was published on The New York Times Op-Ed page in April 1977. President Jimmy Carter read his essay and invited Allegrante to the White House where he met with Dr. Peter Bourne, then the special assistant to the President for health affairs, to discuss the dilemmas that working-class Americans face in paying medical bills. Allegrante has written about the experience, noting that it had an indelible impact on him and shaped his research interests in patient education and advocacy efforts for decades to come.
His dissertation research, “Explaining Safety Helmet Use by Motorcycle Operators Using a Behavioral Intention Model,” which was subsequently published, was conducted under the guidance of the human factors psychologist Rudolf G. Mortimer and explored the social-psychological factors that influence voluntary helmet use. The eminent social psychologist, Martin Fishbein, whose theory he was testing, was a member of his doctoral committee. Allegrante has said that the tensions inherent in balancing private right with public good that were at the core of individual decisions to wear a helmet constitute an enduring dilemma of American democracy, and remain an underlying theme of many public health challenges, including those that came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as wearing a mask, physically distancing, and accepting vaccination—all of which were among the initial public health directives that require changes in behavior.
Allegrante was admitted to a post-doctoral U.S. Public Health Service Traineeship at the Harvard School of Public Health following the completion of his doctorate. He was at Harvard about to begin his studies in the summer of 1979 when he was offered an assistant professorship at Teachers College, Columbia University. Forgoing the postdoctoral fellowship, he moved to New York and joined the faculty of the college in September of that year, becoming chairman of the Department of Health Education at the age of 28. He was promoted to associate professor in 1981, earned tenure shortly thereafter, and was subsequently promoted to full professor in 1993. Allegrante was named the inaugural Charles Irwin Lambert Professor of Health Behavior and Education in 2022. He holds joint faculty appointments in the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Mailman School of Public Health.