Dr. SG will NOT be reviewing applications for the 2018-19 academic year.
Thank you for your interest in the VCU clinical program and in my work. At VCU, we believe we offer graduates students top-notch clinical-scientist training in the areas of child/adolescent clinical and behavioral medicine/health psychology. Our program also benefits from rich practicum experiences offered in the Richmond area. Our relationship with VCU’s excellent medical school also positions the program well for multidisciplinary collaboration, especially with pediatrics. Finally, our location is outstanding. VCU is in the heart of Richmond, VA, a metropolitan area of about 900,000 people on the James River.
Research in our lab has as its defining mission the aim to improve mental health services for children and families. In our work, we collaborate closely with community stakeholders to accomplish this goal, identifying and testing our mutually-generated ideas to improve mental health assessment and treatment services. Our current projects include the following:
1. One focus concerns research on treatment integrity. Dr. Bryce McLeod and I have several projects related to the development of treatment integrity measures (i.e., adherence, competence, differentiation). More information is provided on the TIMS / TIME project here.
2. We are in the early stages of a study collaborating with an agency in the Washington, DC area. The initial projects are pilot, needs-assessment oriented studies, but we hope to expand the scope of our project by obtaining grant funding.
3. We are analyzing data we collected from a multi-year, two-phase project in VCU's pediatric primary care clinic. We hope to use the qualitative and quantitative data we have collected to inform a new project.
4. We are beginning collaboration with Dr. Betsy Farmer and Abbie Kinnebrew in the VCU School of Social Work on issues of training and workforce development. We recently received a pilot grant (Evidence-based Practice for All) from VCU to develop some of these ideas.
Prospective graduates students who would be most happy working with me would have the following interests (in relative order of their likely emphasis during your time at VCU):
- Treatment integrity research
- Dissemination and implementation science
- Community-university partnership research
- Therapist and workforce training
- Treatment outcome research
- Mixed qualitative-quantitative research methods
