RESEARCH AREA
Behavioral Health & Medicine
We focus on health-related behavioral and social sciences to understand the complex interaction between biological, behavioral, social, and environmental processes. Behavioral medicine is the interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of behavioral, psychosocial, and biomedical science knowledge and techniques relevant to the understanding of health and illness, and the application of this knowledge and these techniques to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.
Select Publications
The Prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder in People with HIV: Results from the All of Us Research Program
he All of Us (AoU) Research Program is a national-scale effort to build a dataset to help transform the future of health research by equipping researchers with comprehensive health data from diverse populations, especially those underrepresented in biomedical research. Our objectives were to evaluate the burden of HIV and major depressive disorder (MDD) in underrepresented groups and the frequency of the HIV/MDD comorbidity.
Factors that Predict Patients’ Satisfaction with the Psychological Outcome and the Appearance of their Skin after Treatment
The present study examined whether dermatological patients’ demographic and social characteristics could predict their satisfaction with medical outcomes. Moreover, it focused on two aspects of patients’ satisfaction: firstly, psychological factors that could predict satisfaction from the medical outcome, and secondly, satisfaction from the appearance of their skin after treatment.
HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis and Treatment as Prevention - Beliefs and Access Barriers in Men Who Have Sex with Menn (MSM) and Transgender Women: A Systematic Review
While the annual rates of new HIV infections and diagnoses have remained stable for most groups, troubling increases are seen in transgender women and racial/ethnic minority men who have sex with men (MSM), groups that are disproportionately affected by HIV.
Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science
One of the central goals in any scientific endeavor is to understand causality. Experiments that seek to demonstrate a cause/effect relation most often manipulate the postulated causal factor.
Investigation of Family Functioning and Parental Tensioning in Addiction
Addiction is a chronic disease and relapsing disorder that leads to serious personal and familial issues. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between family functioning and parenting stress in persons with addiction.