Student Claire Ryan Receives $20,000 National Doctoral Dissertation Award
Doctoral student Claire Ryan is the recipient of the Alvin R. Tarlov & John E. Ware Jr. Doctoral Dissertation Award in Patient Reported Outcomes for 2020-21 by the Health Assessment Lab (HAL) at Dartmouth University.
She was selected for the $20,000 award by HAL’s selection committee and board of directors for the merits of her doctoral research and use of patient-reported outcomes.
Claire is a fifth-year doctoral student in the School Psychology program at The University of Texas College of Education, specializing in pediatric psychology. Her overarching goals as a deaf clinician and researcher are to increase the capacity for universal screening and early identification of mental health problems in deaf youth
“This is a significant and well-deserved honor for Claire,” said Stephanie W. Cawthon, PhD, professor at the College and Claire’s doctoral advisor and mentor. “She is in the top 1% of all students I’ve advised in the past 25 years, with scholarly contributions that demonstrate a high level of expertise, creative problem solving, collaborative leadership, and rigorous thinking.”
Claire’s proposal, Evaluation of the linguistic validity and psychometric properties of the ASL-SDQ with deaf youth, focuses on improving measures available to identify mental health issues in deaf children. The need for valid measures in this field is dire: Deaf children experience, on average, far more adverse childhood experiences than their hearing peers and experience much higher rates of both internalizing and externalizing mental health challenges.
“Claire’s study serves a critical need in the field that is challenged by a lack of psychometrically sound, valid measures that support development and evaluation of interventions that can reverse these deeply troubling trends,” said Dr. Cawthon.
Claire has held multiple competitive fellowships — a testament, said Dr. Cawthon, to her aptitude and promise in research and its importance for supporting positive clinical outcomes for marginalized populations.
The award is named in honor of HAL’s founders, Drs. Alvin Tarlov and John Ware, Jr., who are two of the world’s leading pioneers in the development and use of patient reported outcome measures. HAL is a nonprofit organization with the goal of advancing state-of-the-art tools for monitoring health care services and health outcomes from the patient/consumer point of view.