Chad Rethorst, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Healthy Living within the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Dallas, and the Department of Nutrition at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Rethorst’s research focuses on the development and optimization of behavioral interventions to improve the health of individuals with chronic medical conditions, with particular emphasis on the use of digital technologies for the delivery and evaluation of behavior change interventions. Further, his work evaluates the effects of physical activity interventions on mental health. Dr. Rethorst is Principal Investigator on a USDA-funded project to evaluate the effects of an app-based behavior change intervention on cardiovascular disease risk among women and co-investigator on two NIH-funded R01s examining behavioral interventions for chronic disease risk reduction. He has previously received research funding as Principal Investigator from the National Institute of Mental Health, American Cancer Society, and Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas.
Dr. Rethorst received his Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Arizona State University, a master’s degree in Counseling and Sport Psychology from Boston University, and completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Prior to joining Texas A&M, Dr. Rethorst was an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center and served as Director of Clinical Research at WeightWatchers.