Oana Blaga, MSc, PhD
Assistant Professor, Director of Center for Health Policy and Public Health (CHPPH)
Director CHPPHBiography
Dr. Oana Blaga is Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and Public Health at Babeș-Bolyai University, specializing in behavioral insights, behavioral economics, and implementation science for health behavior change. With over 13 years of experience, she conducts mixed-methods research to develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based behavioral interventions across diverse populations.
Dr. Blaga has served as local Principal Investigator for six NIH-funded projects, including three randomized controlled trials testing innovative mHealth interventions leveraging Motivational Interviewing and Self-Determination Theory for smoking cessation and maternal health. As a certified implementation science specialist, she brings rigorous approaches to scaling behavioral interventions in real-world settings.
Her most recent implementation projects focus on a Parent-Administered Premature Infant Oral Motor Intervention (PIOMI) and the implementation of Kangaroo Mother Care in hospital settings in Romania, both undertaken in partnership with the Romanian Association of Long Hospitalized Newborns. She currently serves as a member of the Behavioral Observatory Advisory Group at ECDC and previously served as WHO Technical Advisory Group member on Behavioural and Cultural Insights (2022-2025) and Romania’s National focal point for behavioral and cultural insights (2021-2022).
Research Interests
Publications
- Blaga, O. M., Dascal, M. D., Onișor, A., Frățilă, T., Morar, A., Mihu, D., ... & Meghea, C. I. (2025). Smartphone intervention for pregnancy smoking cessation with peer support: the study protocol of the SmokeFree Together 2.0 (SFT 2.0) randomised controlled trial. BMJ open, 15(3), e100259.
- Širvinskienė, G., Forray, A. I., König-Bachmann, M., Blaga, O. M., et al. (2024). Experiences of childbirth care in Lithuania and Romania: Insights from the European Babies Born Better survey. Birth, 51(1), 121-133.
- Warran, K., Smith, C., Ugron, H., Blaga, O., et al. (2023). Implementing a singing-based intervention for postpartum depression in Denmark and Romania. Frontiers in Medicine, 10, 1249503.
- Blaga, O. M., Hentes, E., Ungureanu, M. I., & Forray, A. I. (2022). Predictors of planned caesarean section births in a sample of Romanian women. The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 37(3), 1555-1565.
Current Projects
- BIRTH Cost Action
Courses
- Implementation science - BA - English
- Epidemiology - BA & MPH - English
- Intro to Behavioral and Cultural Insights - MPH - English
- mHealth - BA - English
- Foundation for Research Methods in Public Health - MPH - English