Live Webinars

Society for Health Psychology Webinar

Presenter: Drs. Christopher AhnAllen, John Ruiz and Maria Anastasiades Christopher AhnAllen, PhD, ABSMIP, is a Board-certified clinical psychologist and serves as Interim Director of Psychology and Director of Psychology Training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) where he is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the inaugural training director of the HMS/BWH Clinical Psychology Internship Training Program and led the efforts to include a Gender-Affirming Care Track in 2025. He has previously served on the APA Continuing Education Committee (2022-2024) and served as Chair in 2024. John M. Ruiz, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona. Associate Director, Office of Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, & Accessibility (IDEA), UA Cancer Center. Editor-In-Chief, Health Psychology. Dr. Ruiz is a Past President of the Behavioral Medicine Research Council (BMRC), current Editor of Health Psychology, and serves as Chair of APA’s Council of Editors. He has an extensive record in Diversity Equity and Inclusivity, including in his current positions as well as serving as past chair of the APA’s Committee on Socioeconomic Status, an inaugural member of APA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Health Equity, and serving on the 2021 APA Presidential Task Force on Health Equity. Dr. Ruiz is also a current member of the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) which develops evidence-based recommendations to guide national healthcare for all. Maria Anastasiades, PsyD is the Chief of the Psychology Consult Liaison Service at Baptist Health in Jacksonville FL. She also serves as the co-DCT of the Clinical Health Psychology Postdoctoral fellowship at Baptist Behavioral Health. She is also the Chair of the Education and Training Council of SfHP. Editors.  Overview:          This webinar will explore the intersection of DEI and education and training from the perspective of both research and clinical training. Our two expert speakers will share insights in each of these domains, particularly within the current landscape of practice. Our four objectives are: Describe how to use the ADDRESSING formulation within clinical supervision; Identify 2 methods by which to integrate DEI into clinical supervision; Describe the value of DEI to research and science for all; and Become more aware of differences between directed actions vs. pre-emptive adherence and why this distinction is important. Target audience is intermediate.

Learning Objectives: Intended Audience: Intermediate

1. Describe how to use the ADDRESSING formulation within clinical
2. Identify 2 methods by which to integrate DEI into clinical
3. Describe the value of DEI to research and science for
4. Describe differences between directed actions vs. pre-emptive adherence and why this distinction is important.

Presenter: Dr. Shannon Sauer-Zavala Dr. Sauer-Zavala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky (UK) and is the founding Director of Clinical Services at the UK Clinic for Emotional Health. She is also the Director of Compass Mental Health Consultation, LLC, an organization with a mission to train mental health providers and organizations in cutting-edge evidence-based interventions. Dr. Sauer-Zavala received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from UK in 2011; she completed her predoctoral internship at Duke University Medical Center and her postdoctoral fellowship at Boston University. She then spent seven years on the faculty in BU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Science before returning home to UK in 2019. Her research is focused on exploring personality-based mechanisms that maintain psychological symptoms and using this information to develop more targeted, easily-disseminated intervention strategies. Her research has been supported by NIMH, NIAAA, Templeton Foundation, the Center for Implementation and Improvement Sciences, and the Canadian Institute of Health Research. Dr. Sauer-Zavala has co-authored over 140 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books. In particular, she is a co-developer of the Unified Protocol and, more recently, BPD Compass. Email Dr. Sauer-Zavala at ssz@personality-compass.com and follow her on Twitter/X at @SauerZavala or Instagram at @self.made.personality.    Overview:          Millions of people with a mental health condition will not receive care each year (SAMHSA, 2017) and of those who do, only 30% will receive evidence-based treatment (Radomsky & Otto, 2001). Although efficacious interventions for many mental disorders have been developed, uptake of these treatments in routine clinical practice has been poor. Single disorder protocols for each categorical DSM diagnosis may be burdensome for clinicians and may not adequately address the needs of patients with co-occurring disorders (McHugh & Barlow, Year). By contrast, transdiagnostic interventions designed to target the limited number of shared mechanisms that account for symptoms across a range of psychopathology have the potential to reduce burden on clinicians (i.e., fewer treatments to learn) and can elegantly address comorbid conditions. Dimensional models of psychopathology, including the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP; Kotov et al., 2017) and the Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD; APA, 2013) point to a limited number of personality-based mechanisms that confer risk for a wide swath of psychopathology (Michellini, YEAR). This webinar will describe the advantages of a transdiagnostic, personality-based system of psychotherapy (Sauer-Zavala et al., 2023a) describe the development, efficacy, and major components of two personality-focused transdiagnostic interventions (i.e., the Unified Protocol [Barlow et al., 2018], COMPASS [Sauer-Zavala et al., 2023b) that have the potential to make treatment more parsimonious, potent, and personalizable.

Learning Objectives: Intended Audience: Intermediate

1. Describe the clinical utility of a system of psychotherapy based on a dimensional, personality-based classification system
2. Apply a transdiagnostic, personality-focused case conceptualization to common mental health conditions
3. Describe the components of two transdiagnostic personality-focused interventions: Unified Protocol and BPD Compass