APF Board of Trustees welcomes two new members
Rosie Phillips Bingham, PhD, vice president for student affairs at the University of Memphis, and W. Bruce Walsh, PhD, professor emeritus in the department of psychology at The Ohio State University, joined the APF Board of Trustees on Jan. 1. Both psychologists have long been committed to APF and its work to support graduate students and early career psychologists. Bingham is a longtime advocate of APF's National Multicultural Conference and Summit Fund and is a member of its Legacy Club. Walsh has served as one of the foundation's honorary trustees and is a member of APF's Campaign Cabinet, which spearheads APF's Campaign to Transform the Future.
Sharon Berry donates generously to APF
Sharon Berry, PhD, of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, has made a new commitment to strengthen the field of psychology with a gift to APF's Campaign to Transform the Future.
Growing up in a large family in a small rural community, Berry has always been interested in working with others. In college, she studied to become a guidance counselor, but a job as a substance abuse counselor through a regional mental health center led her to focus on clinical behavioral health.
Berry had already made one gift to the APF Campaign, but decided to make another to increase the impact of her support. "Several psychologists are stepping forward and making second and third gifts to APF's campaign," says Dorothy W. Cantor, PsyD, APF president. "We are so grateful for the impact they will make."
Berry describes her new gift to APF as an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of many. "The profession has been very good to me and this is an opportunity to give back in some way," she says.
Thanks to the support of donors like Berry, APF will be able to ignite the projects and careers of more young psychologists than ever before.
For more information on how to make a gift to APF and join your colleagues in the Campaign to Transform the Future, visit APF or call APF's Senior Development Officer, Rachael Lipsetts, at (202) 336-5622.
Graduate student to investigate childhood injury in Uganda
APF has awarded Marissa Swanson, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the 2015 $5,000 APF Lizette Peterson-Homer Injury Prevention Grant.
Swanson is a graduate student who works in the Youth Safety Lab with her mentor, David Schwebel, PhD, conducting research to promote the safety and well-being of children worldwide. She will use the grant to study unintentional childhood injury in rural Uganda, where large families and parents' agricultural work increase children's risk of injury. Swanson will also use the grant to develop and evaluate a culturally sensitive intervention program to improve supervision of young children by preadolescent siblings.
The Lizette Peterson-Homer Memorial Injury Research Grant supports research into psychological and behavioral aspects of the prevention of injuries in children and adolescents. The grant was named after the late Lizette Peterson-Homer, who devoted her professional career to improving the status of children in the face of the most significant threats to their health and development. For more information on the Peterson-Homer Grant, visit APF.
Rost receives APF Div. 39 grant
Felicitas Rost of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust received the 2015 $4,000 APF Div. 39 (Psychoanalysis) Grant.
Rost is completing her PhD at University College London. Her work is aimed at connecting psychoanalytic treatment and empirical research.
Rost will use the grant to address the lack of systematic research on the psychoanalytic "sleeper effect" — the sustained and enhanced improvements over years after the treatment is terminated. Rost will examine the mechanisms of the effect using qualitative methods, which will be included in a long-term follow-up study of patients diagnosed with severe, treatment-resistant depression.
The Div. 39 grant supports efforts in education, research and service that advance and encourage the field of psychoanalysis. For more information, visit APF.
Grantee Spotlight: The road to an internship and beyond
In June 2014, APF gave Sophia Choukas-Bradley, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a $1,500 Henry David Research Grant, which supports ongoing research in behavioral aspects of population studies or human reproductive behavior.
Even though the grant was modest, Choukas-Bradley says it made a significant impact on her career by enabling her to use latent growth curve modeling to examine longitudinal trajectories of adolescents' and young adults' sexual behaviors. Choukas-Bradley will use this type of modeling as a central part of her continuing research in youth sexual health.
The APF grant also helped Choukas-Bradley to secure other funding, and to gain acceptance to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's internship program at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic for her postdoctoral training. Six months after receiving the grant, she also received the first annual Doug Kirby Adolescent Sexual Health Research Grant, which is awarded to support research related to the sexual health of adolescents and young adults.
Choukas-Bradley plans to apply to tenure track faculty positions in psychology and continue her research in adolescent sexual health. "I thank the American Psychological Foundation for providing such important support to my research and career trajectory," she says.
