Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award

Grace Cushman, who completed her Ph.D. in 2021 in the Department of Psychology, is a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University’s Child Mental Health T32 Program, a competitive research-focused, NIH-funded program. As a pediatric psychologist, she collaborates with medical providers in children’s hospitals. Cushman’s research focuses on understanding the interplay between psychology and medicine to find modifiable factors that could improve health outcomes and the lives of chronically ill children and their families. She investigates factors that facilitate or impede adherence to medical and treatment regimens in youth, including parent functioning and their perspectives on their children’s well-being. She has successfully transferred her skills from patients with solid organ transplants and inflammatory bowel disease during her Ph.D. research to those at Brown University with food allergy and asthma. Publishing 30 peer-reviewed articles in top journals, she is on a trajectory to be one of the leading researchers in her field.