Feature
Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest
Martha E. Bernal, PhD
Bernal is recognized for her extensive advocacy for minority issues. She was born in 1931 in San Antonio, Texas, to Mexican immigrant parents and raised in El Paso, Texas. Socialized in the traditional Mexican values of her parents, Bernal also experienced a mix of bicultural Mexican-American values. She received a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1952 and a PhD in clinical psychology from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1962.
Her experiences with sexism and racism as a student and faculty member made her aware of the lack of representation of minorities in psychology. The increasing population of people of color in the United States made her deeply concerned about this underrepresentation and the lack of preparation of all psychologists to serve multicultural populations. Across 30 years of her career, she has worked to make the profession of psychology responsive to these concerns.
Early in her career she gained national visibility for her parent training research. With the help of a National Research Service Award from NIMH and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, she retrained in the areas of minority mental health and research on the ethnic identity of Mexican-American children, and spurred national attention to this research topic.
She worked to establish APA's Board of Ethnic Minority Affairs and served on numerous groups, including the association's Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training and the Board for the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest. Bernal retired from Arizona State University in 1996.
Early Career Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest
Edward Dunbar, PhD
Dunbar, a practicing psychologist in metropolitan Los Angeles, is being honored for his clinical activities, including treatment of workplace harassment, crime victimization, psychological trauma and violence risk assessment.
Dunbar consults with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in the areas of hate crime offender evaluation and violence prevention in the schools.
Dunbar has developed and implemented a training program for school mental health staff in the intervention with victims of bias crimes and hate incidents. He has also developed professional development programs in the area of multicultural education at Teachers College, with Sam Johnson, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with Jeanine Cogan, PhD.
Currently he is an associate clinical professor in the department of psychology at UCLA. Formerly he was on staff at the UCLA Center for Study and Resolution of Interracial and Interethnic Conflict and the National Research Center on Asian-American Mental Health. Dunbar has also been on the faculty at Columbia University and has worked for the Hawaii State Senate. His publications have been in the areas of the clinical evaluation of racism, victimology and intergroup relations.
He received his doctorate in counseling psychology from Columbia University. He holds professional certificates: one from Georgetown University in Cross-Cultural Training and one from Harvard University in Adult Education. He completed his undergraduate study at Chaminade University of Honolulu, where he graduated with honors in Education and Behavioral Sciences.
Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy
Susan D. Cochran, PhD
Cochran, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA's School of Public Health, is being honored for her work on behalf of gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.
She holds a joint appointment in the department of statistics and serves as chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Program.
Cochran received a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master's in epidemiology from UCLA. She was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA's departments of obstetrics and gynecology and psychiatry and conducted research on psychosocial issues in gynecologic cancer.
Over the years, she has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, the American Psychologist and the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology on such topics as psychopathology, coping and resiliency in lesbian and gay male mental health; HIV prevention in gay men and women of color; psychosocial and prevention issues in cancer and women's health; and methodological issues in the design, sampling and analysis of quantitative research on lesbians and gay men.
She has been the recipient of a Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health for her work on statistical methodology. She has received a number of awards for her research on gay and lesbian populations from the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association, APA's Div. 44 (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues), the Association of Gay Psychologists and the National Gay Academic Union.
