Our research focuses on implementing innovative techniques in the assessment and treatment of pain, mental health and substance use conditions in children and adolescents, including evaluating the progression of these conditions and the benefits of interventions (e.g., medications, invasive procedures, therapy). Our primary goal is to leverage the large amount of published data, clinical data derived from electronic health records, and digital assessments integrated in our patient’s daily lives using smartphones and wearables, in order to optimize assessment and treatment for pediatric patients. 

We pursue these research questions using interdisciplinary methods drawn from clinical psychology and psychiatry, placebo research, biomedical informatics, computer science, and psychophysiology. This interdisciplinary approach is critical to understanding the longitudinal relationships between genes, psychological factors, psychosocial context and trajectories of pediatric mental health and pain disorders.

There are three core areas: (1) Network meta-analyses of existing intervention studies. (2) Development and implementation of a comprehensive and dynamic framework for assessing pain, functional, emotional and behavioral outcomes. (3) Bioinformatic approaches to mapping associations between behavioral and clinical phenotypes with genotypes and genetic variants.