Professor Peter Salovey is a particularly deserving recipient of the 2015 Excellence in Health Psychology Research Award from the Division of Health Psychology. In fact, the organization has been delinquent in not bestowing this award on him previously, in light of his myriad contributions to Health Psychology. Fortunately, this oversight is remedied today. It’s actually easy to see why he was missed. He is so prolific and has contributed so deeply and broadly so that he has functionally become “hidden in plain sight.”

In any case, besides seminal contributions to the study of mood, emotions, and emotional intelligence he has and continues to contribute significantly to the application of social/personality principles to health protective behaviors, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, sunscreen use, and early detection, such as mammography. Probably his most subsCtantive contribution involves research on the effects of informational framing, in terms of costs versus benefits, and tailoring to optimize the effectiveness of public service announcements. When is it optimal to use an appeal that emphasizes costs versus benefits? What attributes of recipients should be used to tailor the persuasive communications? This research has involved a large range of samples, but most notable are his programmatic interest in exploring different communication routes and engaging inner-city and other under-served populations in field settings.

For those with a quantitative bent, Peter has published thirteen books and 359 peer-reviewed articles or chapters. He has received 19 awards, including being elected to the Institute of Medicine (2013), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, SAMHSA Excellence Award, G. Stanley Hall Lecturer from APA, NCI CIS Partner In Research Award, and an elected fellow of Division 38. Along the way, he collected three honorary degrees from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, Shanghai, Jiao Tong University in China and the University of Pretoria. He has served as an editorial board member several times for top-tier journals, as an Associate Editor of Psychological Bulletin and of Emotion and the Founding Editor of Review of General Psychology (three APA journals). His experience as a government consultant is also considerable. He has been PI or Co-PI for 30 grants, most of which were federal.

He served as mentor or collaborator with several graduate students or fellows who have achieved notable success in health psychology; the list includes Elissa Epel, Alex Rothman, Christopher Hsee, David DeSteno, Antonio Freitas, Brian Bedell, Tamera Schneider, and Amy Latimer. In addition, Peter has served as Chair of the Psychology Department, Dean of Yale College, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Provost and currently serves as President of Yale University.

In sum, Peter Salovey has made extraordinary contributions to the field of psychology and to health psychology, in particular. He and his collaborators brought message framing to health psychology, he “talks and walks the talk” with respect to health disparities and underserved populations, and has elucidated the role of tailoring in theory-based programs and interventions. He is a “superstar role model” and embodies the spirit, vision, and accomplishment associated with the founders of the field.

This year’s recipient of the Division 38 Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Research by an Early Career Professional is Dr. Qian Lu.

Dr. Lu is currently an associate professor and the director of Culture and Health Research Center at the department of Psychology, University of Houston.  She completed her medical training from China, and her Ph.D. was conducted in the social psychology and health psychology program at UCLA under Dr. Annette Stanton.

Dr. Lu has conducted a programmatic line of research to improve the lives of minority cancer survivors and understudied populations. Her inter-disciplinary work in the elimination of health disparities, interventions with Asian Americans, and cross-cultural studies especially among minority populations is taking the field in a new direction of thinking about how to successfully develop interventions for under-represented populations to make more significant impact in communities.

Her empirical studies are worth noting for the programmatic nature and sophisticated methodologies . Her designs combine laboratory experiments, field interventions, biological mechanisms, mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, and a strong and true community based participatory approach. For example, Dr. Lu spent the past five years piloting and refining a social support intervention for Chinese American breast cancer survivors. She has recently received a R01 grant from NCI as PI to test the effectiveness of this intervention as well its underlying cultural, psychosocial, and biological mechanisms by using mixed methods and community based participatory approach that promises to expand existing western theories and will inspire new theories by incorporating more culturally relevant constructs. In her relatively short time as an new investigator, she has achieved almost $4 million dollars in grant support, comprised of two research grants as Principal Investigator and a career development grant, supported by the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Dr. Lu’s findings have contributed to our understanding of health disparities in cancer and pain, Asian American cancer survivorship, and developing culturally sensitive interventions for understudied populations.  She has authored several high visibility papers, including her 2013 health psychology paper on “Multiethnic differences in responses to laboratory pain stimuli among children”, and her 2012 Annals of Behavioral Medicine paper on “Belief in divine control, coping, and race/ethnicity among older women with breast cancer.” Her 2012 Health Psychology paper of “A pilot study of expressive writing intervention among Chinese-speaking breast cancer survivors”, received considerable media attention, and made news on NBC, the Atlantic, ABC13, and Fox26. In addition, she has established several collaboration sites in China and helped to bring advanced methodology to cancer survivorship research to China.  The impact of her work is beyond her scholarship in the U.S. and is reaching internationally.

Dr. Lu is passionate about bringing the positive impact of research to communities. Working through true partnership with community organizations, her research provides direct and sustainable benefits for communities of color who participate in the research, and the design approach assures more valid and relevant findings.

Dr. Lu is blazing a trail and is making significant contributions to the field of cancer health disparities. Her scholarship and originality is impressive at this early stage in her career. It is with great pleasure that we present the Division 38 Excellence in Health Psychology Research by an Early Career Professional Award to Dr. Lu.

I am very pleased to present the 2015 award for Excellence in Clinical Health Psychology to Dr. Mark Vogel. Dr. Vogel is Associate Professor of Family Medicine and an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine. A fellow of the Michigan Psychological Association, Dr. Vogel is widely respected for his early, sustained and effective leadership supporting clinical health psychologists in the primary care behavioral health care model; interprofessional education of psychologists across the career trajectory in primary care setting; as well as his ongoing and invaluable service to several national organizations.

For almost 20 years, Dr. Vogel has been effectively defining the roles of, educating, advocating for, evaluating and writing about psychologists in primary care settings. An early and effective leader among primary care psychologists, he provides and promotes behavioral health services in family medicine settings; develops innovative, inter-professional training models for psychologists and family practice residents; collaboratively writes biopsychosocial curriculum for training across the health professions; and is a strong voice for evidence based care and evaluation of patient and provider outcomes in primary care settings. The Vogel et al and Nash, McKay, Vogel and Masters publications are invaluable contributions to our literature on primary care psychology workforce development. His distinguished, innovative and sustained contributions in clinical health psychology and primary care psychology are reflected in his: clinical work, his educational activities, his writing, and professional his leadership in several national organizations including APA’s Division 38, ABSAME, the Society for Behavioral Medicine, and the Society for Teachers in Family Medicine.

Personally, I have gotten to know Mark most recently in the last three years we along with six other primary care psychologists are developing a curriculum for psychology graduate students.   It may have been an early interest that he had in going to Hollywood as a film director, but Mark has taken on the task of creating videos for this curriculum that can inspire and educate students to work in primary care. He is a pleasure to work with. His diligence, creativity, and contributions to our team have been outstanding.

Again, it is with great pleasure that I present the award for Excellence in Clinical Health Psychology to Dr. Mark Vogel.

I am pleased to congratulate Kevin T. Larkin upon receiving the Cynthia D. Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Education and Training. Dr. Larkin received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. That year he joined the faculty at West Virginia University (WVU), where he served thirteen years as director of clinical training. Since 2013, he has served as department chair at WVU.

Board certified in clinical health psychology, he has participated in every conference and activity related to defining education and training competencies in health psychology in the past ten years. At one of those training conferences, it was decided that it was again time to reinvigorate the then-dormant Council of Clinical Health Psychology Training Programs (CCHPTP).   Kevin not only participated in the reinvigoration process, he also chaired CCHPTP from 2007 to 2013. Under Kevin’s leadership CCHPTP became an active in important participant in the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC), where Kevin played a major role both in helping to define the future and the competencies involved in health service psychology, and in assessing and developing interventions to deal with the increasingly problematic internship match imbalance.

The reintroduction of CCHPTP proved to be pivotal in improving relationships among the various general and specialty councils in CCTC, facilitating the collaboration among these groups in the development and comments on the new Standards of Accreditation, and working to ameliorate the internship match imbalance. Keven was a leader in all of these activities, and was able to both represent the interests of health psychology while simultaneously seeing the bigger picture and remaining sensitive to issues engendered by those concerns as well. He led and/or participated in a number of initiatives in CCHPTP and within APA that put that organization and Division 38 together in a leadership role when it comes to primary integrated care, the possible impact of the Affordable Care Act on education and training, and the competencies that will be required in the future if psychologists are to play a role in these areas.

Kevin has published frequently on issues related to education and training, as well as on topics related to health psychology in general. He is so well recognized in the field, that when the book series “Specialty Competencies in Professional Psychology,” published by Oxford University Press, wanted a book on competencies in clinical health psychology, Kevin was the obvious choice to author a book on this topic. This book will no doubt serve as a blueprint for education and training in the future.

Dr. Larkin has been recognized for his commitment to Education and Training – seemingly since he first began teaching. In addition to Faculty Teaching Awards, he recently received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Council of Clinical Health Psychology Training Programs and the Beverly Thorn Award for Outstanding DCT Service from the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology. He is a Fellow of APA and Division 38, as well as the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

Kevin has been on the forefront of issues related to education and training. He is a big thinker who is able to see how health psychology fits into the entire context of education and training, and he is able to translate those thoughts into action plans that move the field forward. For this, and for everything else he has done for the field, Kevin T. Larkin is a fitting recipient of the Cynthia D. Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Education and Training.

This year’s recipient of 2015 Nathan W. Perry, Jr. Award for Career Service to Health Psychology is Dr. John Robinson. This award was conceived to honor those who have made significant contributions to Division 38 and the advancement of health psychology as a field. I have known Dr. Robinson for decades and am most familiar with his knowledge, skills and attitude toward our profession.

John is a pioneer and one of the proverbial “grandparents” of the field of clinical health psychology in the US. He is a long standing mentor for young students who wish to learn the clinical and administrative craft of being a psychologist in an academic health center. His CV is replete with “firsts” in our field:

• First African American psychologist in the Air Force
• First African American psychologist in the Navy
• Long-standing senior faculty/administrator in a Department of Surgery (Howard University)

He has written widely on health psychology topics, with particular reference to diversity in the provision of services and career advancement. APA has recognized John with the Stanley Sue Award for Distinguished Contributions to Diversity, and the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers awarded him the Joseph Matarazzo Award for distinguished service and contributions to clinical health psychology, their highest honor bestowed to him from a very competitive field of nominees.

John is board certified in both clinical and clinical health psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP), but in addition has served as president of both boards, a measure of the respect his colleagues afford him. I can attest that his presidency of the ABPP Health Psychology board was transformative in reorganizing and revitalizing what had become a rather static enterprise.

His modeling of what a psychologist can do in the jurisdiction of medicine, whether serving on the Board of Trustees of two universities, in the military or the Public Health Service, has been illustrative and a GPS for early career health psychologists looking for a guidepost to learn what is possible for them. His service to our profession is long standing, of high quality and unfailingly outstanding.

Perhaps John’s strongest suit is that regardless of his almost legendary status in the development of clinical health psychology in the US, he has remained dedicated to the grooming and nurturance of students, whether his own or those who seek him out for guidance and support. Never one to withhold support and wisdom from a student or ECP, he is open and approachable to young psychologists and generous with his time and expertise. He is never too busy to answer emails or calls, to take students to lunch or dinner to discuss their career aspirations, or to speak directly to their needs and ambitions during presentations.

Dr. Robinson is an educator of physicians and psychologists, a role model who has had an interprofessional, team-based approach to education, training and clinical services long before the term “interprofessionalism” came into vogue.

As a clinician, Dr. Robinson’s faculty appointments in the departments of psychiatry and surgery at Howard University Medical School and Hospital reflect the respect his colleagues have for his day-to-day contributions to quality patient care.

Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Robinson has been a tireless advocate and mentor on behalf of ethnic and gender minorities in Clinical Health Psychology. Ethnic and gender diversity within our field has been a major professional goal and accomplishment for him. As a result of Dr. Robinson’s substantial efforts, future minority physicians have a better understanding and deeper appreciation of the crucial role of health psychologists in both primary and tertiary healthcare.

John Robinson is a proverbial “man for all seasons”, who has the academic credentials, the clinical acumen, and the professional dedication to seamlessly fit the requirements of those who developed the Nathan Perry Award. Nate was very fond of John and had great respect for him; knowing them both I believe each would be honored by his selection for this honor.

The 2018 recipient of the Society for Health Psychology’s (SfHP) Cynthia D. Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Education and Trainingis Sharon Berry, PhD, ABPP.

The Belar Awardis designed to honor a psychologist whose work has positively influenced the health psychology education and training community. Dr. Berry’s career, as an internship training director, chair of BEA, recipient of the “other” Belar Award (The Belar Education Advocacy Award), her chairing BEA’s work group on the integration of science and practice of psychology, her leadership and program planning for both the Association of Psychologist in Academic Health Centers and the Council of Clinical Health Psychology Programs all reflect her dedication and passion for our field and her life’s work focused on the importance of quality education in health psychology.

Space does not allow a detail description of all those activities, and many others – many of which have touched each of us and our students. But I will mention two—when you walk with Dr. Berry through the halls of our annual convention, it is like walking with a rock star.  Former interns line up to hug her and thank her for their excellent training and our colleagues line up to talk with her about the progress of some committee or work group they are on, were on, or plan to be on that she is chairing (and yes, many hug her also). Second.  Dr. Berry was the first recipient of the BEA Education Advocacy award (now called the Belar). This award recognizes her national commitment to lobby for psychology on Capitol Hill, for her commitment to make sure there is adequate funding for our education and training programs, and that there are funds needed for psychology to back those candidates who support our education, training, science, and our students.

Clearly Dr. Berry is truly deserving of the Cynthia D. Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Education and Training.

We all aspire to meaningfully influence students and young professionals during their training and educational experiences. However, there are those individuals amongst us who stand out as exceptionally dedicated and skilled at doing this over the life of their careers. Dr. Kevin Masters is one of these remarkable individuals.

Dr. Masters’ impact and breadth of knowledge in health and psychology is impressive, as he has taught thousands of students in over 20 courses of differing content throughout his career. He is a particularly effective, thought-provoking, and student-centered educator who places a high priority on student development both in and outside of the classroom. Examples include his efforts to encourage current and former students to pursue enriching opportunities within professional organizations, such as the Society for Health Psychology, and for scholarly journals, such as the Journal of Behavioral Medicineand Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

In addition to his work with individual students, Dr. Masters has played a pivotal role in the development and promotion of graduate education in clinical health psychology at Utah State University, Syracuse University, and most recently, the University of Colorado Denver.  At these institutions, he has also been active in mentoring early career professionals as post-doctoral fellows, as NIH K-award and faculty research award recipients, and as new faculty members. Whereas the long hours devoted to program administration and mentorship of junior colleagues seldom receive adequate recognition, they are clearly among the most important and enduring legacies that one can have as an educator. Accordingly, Dr. Masters’ dedication to promoting the professional careers for future generations of psychologists is worthy of special mention.

It is also notable that Dr. Masters’ publications have had, and continue to have, direct effects on professional training in clinical and clinical health psychology. For example, his co-authored book, Assessing Outcome in Clinical Practice, provides a valuable how-to guide for clinicians and clinical researchers who wish to develop empirical evidence in support of existing interventions or to establish new approaches to treatment.

Finally, throughout his career Dr. Masters has demonstrated an enduring commitment to professional service and leadership.  Although he is perhaps most widely known for his editorship of Journal of Behavioral Medicineand, more recently, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, he also had a profound impact on clinical and experimental health psychology throughout his tenure as Editor of The Health Psychologist.  In this role he promoted an ongoing forum for health psychology practitioners, scientists, and scientist-practitioners to share significant insights regarding the integration of health psychology theory and practice.  Dr. Masters also served as a board member to the Council of Clinical Health Psychology Training Programs, as a site-visitor for the APA Commission on Accreditation, and as co-chair of our Society’s Presidential Task Force on Education and Training in Clinical Health Psychology.

These are but a few examples of the many contributions for which we honor Dr. Masters with the Cynthia Belar Award for Excellence in Health Psychology Education & Training.

Dr. Dunkel Schetter has a long history of senior leadership in academia and professional organizations.  Dunkel Schetter is Professor of Psychology and former Chair and current CoChair of the Health Psychology Program at UCLA.  She led the efforts to transition the UCLA Health Psychology Program from a graduate minor to a department PhD major. Since 1995, Dunkel Schetter has also directed the NIMH-funded training program for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows in biobehavioral issues in mental and physical health.

She is currently the Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Development at UCLA, where among other responsibilities, she leads the Council of Academic Advisors program, which provides faculty mentoring for Assistant Professors. In 2017, Dunkel Schetter completed the Women’s Leadership Initiative Program sponsored by the Office of the President for the University of California System, and is now launching a comprehensive leadership training program for faculty.

Over the past 30 years at UCLA, Dunkel Schetter has accumulated a distinguished record of research, teaching, and service.  She has successfully mentored many undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and junior faculty,  for example, enthusiastically nominating numerous students and faculty for professional honors and awards.

Professor Dunkel Schetter is nationally and internationally recognized for her innovative work and leadership as a health psychologist. Her superb leadership skills include creating a vision and implementing it, while engaging the involvement and best efforts of others.  A past mentee commented: “my success and fulfillment as an academic psychologist is grounded in the foundation that Chris helped me establish as a graduate student.”

Professor Dunkel Schetter’s research program has received national and international recognition for its innovations in understanding stress, coping, social support processes and health.  She has conducted ground-breaking studies on stress processes in pregnancy that included prospective longitudinal studies of thousands of pregnant women of diverse ethnicity and socio-economic backgrounds. Among the contributions is that she and colleauges have documented that prenatal anxiety predicts preterm birth and that HPA processes are involved in the mechanisms responsible..  She was also one of the lead editors for the 2017 special issue in TheAmerican Psychologiston close relationships and health.  Dunkel Schetter has published over 180 peer-reviewed articles and has had continuous extramural funding since she began her career in 1981.

Chris Dunkel Schetter is the recipient of numerous honors including the Senior Scientist Award in Health Psychology and the Strickland-Daniel Mentoring Award from Division 35 of the American Psychological Association.  In 2016 she received the prestigious Cynthia D. Belar Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Health Psychology from the Society for Health Psychology.  She has been elected as a fellow of APA Divisions 38, 9 and 8, the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Association for Psychological Sciences and the Western Psychological Association.  She has served as Program Chair, Member at Large, and on the Fellows Nominations Committee among other activities for Division 38, and attended the Arden House conference that launched guidelines for training in Health Psychology in the early 1980s.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Dunkel Schetter in receiving the  Nathan W. Perry Jr. Award for Career Service to Health Psychology.