Each year APF places a high priority on supporting early career psychologists. These talented young minds turn small grants into big ideas, paving the way for continued innovation in the future.

Improving access to quality mental health services for children

Aaron R. Lyon, PhD, a senior fellow at the University of Washington School of Medicine is using his $12,000 Pearson Early Career Grant to improve the accessibility and quality of school-based mental health services for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems.

Gaining insight into how gifted students solve problems

Matthew McBee, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at East Tennessee State University, received the new $50,000 Rosen Early Career Grant to explore whether gifted students adopt attentional and emotional problem-solving strategies more frequently than others.

Reducing health disparities

David Amodio, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, is using his F.J. McGuigan Early Career Investigator Prize to investigate the effects of discrimination on the biological stress response and immune function, as a way to understand and reduce racial disparities in health.

Building stronger families

With $20,000 in funding from the AAPA-APF Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation Fellowship, Cindy Liu, PhD, and Huijiun Li, PhD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, will carry out collaborative psycho-educational training workshops in order to increase mental health knowledge and improve mental health attitudes among Chinese American parents with school-age children.

Assessing the well-being of adopted children

Rachel Farr, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is continuing a study of lesbian, gay, and heterosexual parents and their adopted children with a $15,000 Wayne F. Placek Grant. The study began with preschool-age children and is now assessing these same children in middle childhood. Dr. Farr’s study represents the first longitudinal comparison of adoptive families with lesbian, gay, and heterosexual parents with school-age children.