In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Dana Rose Garfin, a researcher at UC Irvine. She and her colleagues have been conducting research to understand the impact of both the acute and chronic stress of COVID-19. She has been studying how we respond to disasters for the past decade, and how to cope with stress. We discuss a balanced approach to looking at both the positive and negative aspects of COVID-19, along with her important research on mindfulness meditation in homeless women.
Dana Garfin, Ph.D.
Dana Rose Garfin is faculty in the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and the Program in Public Health (Department of Health, Society, and Behavior) at the University of California, Irvine. Her academic work explores how individual-level negative life events and collective trauma effect physical and mental health across the lifespan, and how community-based interventions can alleviate resulting health disparities. She is currently Principal Investigator (PI) of a NIH-funded K01 “Mindfulness-based Intervention to Address PTSD in Trauma-exposed, Homeless Women,” which uses a biopsychosocial approach to examine how mindfulness can help reduce PTSD, depression, and substance abuse and improve regulation of the HPA-axis. She is also co-PI of several National Science Foundation grants that examine how individuals respond and adapt to collective trauma including hurricanes and COVID-19. Her work has been covered in hundreds of domestic and international media outlets and her 2020 paper on COVID-19 was the 3rd most downloaded article across the 89 journals of the American Psychological Association. In 2021 she was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Trauma Psychology by an Early Career Psychologist Award by the American Psychological Association. Dana graduated Suma cum Laude from the University of Colorado, Boulder with BA in Sociology. She has an MA in Social Ecology and a PhD in Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine.
Key Terms: COVID-19, acute stress, chronic stress, anxiety, depression, resilience, adaptation, psychological distress, grief
