With a highly collaborative, transdisciplinary team of colleagues, mentors, and trainees, I conduct parallel lines of clinical research examining (1) fear of recurrence and (2) insomnia among adults affected by cancer and other health conditions, with an emphasis on mind-body and behavioral interventions for managing these concerns.
Through my research, I seek to bridge behavioral medicine, mental health, and psycho-oncology. This is reflected in my faculty appointments in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, MGH Behavioral Medicine, MGH Mongan Institute Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research center, MGH Cancer Center Psychiatric Oncology Services, MGH Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Cancer Care Delivery Research Program. These collaborations enable me to mentor trainees at the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels, which I find particularly meaningful. I serve on several local and national committees and previously co-chaired the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s Integrative Health and Spirituality Special Interest Group (2020-2022). I am highly involved in grant writing. My funding includes the National Institutes of Health (5-year National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health K23, 2-year National Cancer Institute R21), the American Cancer Society (1-year Institutional Research Grant, 4-year Research Scholar Grant), and philanthropy. I have also been fortunate to collaborate on a variety of clinical research projects as a co-investigator or consultant. Examples of recently funded projects as Principal Investigator: Efficacy of Synchronous, Virtual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia across Phases of Cancer Survivorship Innovating CBT-I for Cancer Survivors: An Optimization Trial A Multimodal Mind-Body Intervention for Fear of Recurrence among Cancer Survivors |