Dr. Deborah Toobert was a career scientist focused on lifestyle assessment and interventions, and is now an ORI Scientist Emerita. During her 35-year tenure at ORI, Dr. Toobert conducted research and published numerous articles related to multiple-health-risk behavior self-management, including healthful eating and weight management, physical activity, smoking cessation, problem solving, stress management, and the challenges of assessing, changing, and maintaining improvements in multiple health-risk behaviors.

She has extensive experience in conducting randomized clinical trials with at-risk populations, including older adults with type 2 diabetes who are depressed and obese, underserved populations, Latinas with type 2 diabetes, adults with CHD, healthy female HMO members, and overweight adults.

Dr. Toobert helped develop culturally sensitive research procedures to promote participation and retention, and developed instruments to measure key aspects of multiple-behavior self-management, including the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities (SDSCA) survey, which is used by hundreds of investigators worldwide, and has been translated into 21 languages.