Gonzalez earns Pearson Early Career Grant for work in underserved communities
APF has awarded this year's $12,000 Pearson Early Career Grant to Araceli Gonzalez, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Gonzalez will use the grant to examine the role of community mental health workers in delivering an anxiety and depression intervention to low-income Latino families in a rural primary-care setting.
The Pearson grant supports psychology's efforts to improve areas of critical need in society, including but not limited to innovative scientifically based clinical work with serious mental illness, serious emotional disturbance, incarcerated or homeless individuals, children with serious emotional disturbance and adults with serious mental illness. The grant is also designed to encourage early career psychologists to devote their careers to helping underserved populations.
With the grant, Gonzalez will develop a novel service delivery model that can benefit Latinos in rural areas whose mental health needs are grossly underserved.
For more information about the Pearson Early Career Grant, visit APF Funding.
Identifying and overcoming the challenges of parental military deployment
APF has given the 2014 APF Randy Gerson Memorial Grant to Aubrey Rodriguez, a clinical psychology graduate student at the University of Southern California.
Rodriguez will use the $6,000 grant to study the effects of military deployment on family members. Specifically, Rodriguez will examine parent–adolescent discussions to assess family dynamics that may affect an adolescent's adjustment to a parent's absence due to military service. She will use behavioral observations to identify how a civilian parent may transmit mental health risk to the adolescent child. Rodriguez expects that certain characteristics of their communications will be associated with adolescents' mental health problems (i.e., anxiety, depression and risky behaviors) and will help explain links between military service and youth problems.
Rodriguez says that her findings could lead to interventions for these families. "Identifying modifiable communication processes can inform interventions to prevent military-connected adolescents' behavioral health problems and can provide targets for programs for military families with adolescents," she says.
In addition, she says, the research may reduce mental health disparities among this underserved population.
For more information about the Randy Gerson Memorial Grant.
Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR) gives $25,000 to APF's Transform the Future campaign
PAR, an independent publisher of psychological assessment materials since 1978, strives to be a trusted resource for the best assessments to support the critical work of their customers.
This mission is directed by PAR's four guiding principles:
- Publish innovative, high-quality products that meet customer needs.
- Deliver unparalleled customer service.
- Hire exceptional people and take great care of them.
- Give back to the community through donations of time and financial support to worthwhile organizations that help others.
Now, thanks to a gift of $25,000 to APF's W. Bruce and Jane Walsh Fund in memory of Dr. John L. Holland, PAR is giving back to the psychology community as well as supporting innovative research that tackles some of society's biggest challenges.
Established in 2013, the W. Bruce and Jane Walsh Fund in memory of Dr. John L. Holland supports cutting-edge research investigating how personality, culture and environment affect work behavior and health. This fund honors Holland's legacy and contributions to the theory of career development, counseling and assessment.
PAR's gift to APF will provide much-needed funding for high-quality research in the field to which Holland devoted his career.
"We believe in the purpose and mission of APF, especially related to the research APF will be supporting investigating how personality, culture and environment influence work behavior and health," say PAR's founders, R. Bob Smith III, PhD, and Cathy Smith. "We believe a gift to APF is one way in which psychologists and others can continue the legacy of supporting the activities of others who help make a difference in people's lives."
