We would like to congratulate Melissa on this award which highlights her contributions she has made as a community leader both in her research and in daily life. She runs monthly support groups for youth and families living with chronic illness, volunteers at camps for youth with medical conditions and serves as Lead Programming Developer of Teen Outreach for FARE. Her work seeks to raise awareness and decrease the burden of pediatric chronic illness, bringing particular attention to the psychosocial challenges of children and families living with them. She has published several first-author journal articles on the topic and frequently presents her research at conferences across the country. This past May, she successfully defended her dissertation and has begun a pre-doctoral internship at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital.
Congratulations, Melissa, from everyone at Emory Psychology!