Education, accomplishments, and related professional information for this faculty member can be found in her vita.

I greatly enjoy working with patients and families affected by medical illness. My clinical interests fall under the rubric of behavioral medicine. I provide consultations, short- and/or long-term psychotherapy to patients experiencing distress or difficulties (e.g., nonadherence) in the face of medical illness and/or its accompanying treatment. I use primarily cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions but when treating children especially, I also integrate family systems approaches. In addition, I have experience treating obesity and eating disorders using CBT techniques. I also specialize in diagnostic and cognitive assessment of children and adolescents, particularly with a medical illness, but I am also interested in treating disorders of childhood and adolescence more generally.

My research focuses primarily on the needs of medically-ill children and adults. Currently, in regards to pediatric psychology, I work mainly with liver transplant recipients. I am interested in the transition to adulthood for adolescents with a medical illness. My work in this area addresses whether psychiatric and medical outcomes change when patients are shifted from pediatric to adult oriented settings. I am also studying adolescent illness management and developing interventions aiming to improve mastery of health care responsibilities such as medication adherence. I have a long-standing interest in psychosocial aspects of obesity and intervention development for weight loss maintenance. I am currently assessing quality of life and psychiatric symptoms in adolescents who have developed liver disease due to obesity. My work with medically-ill adults has been mainly with underserved, ethnically diverse cardiac patients. My interests in this area center on developing culturally sensitive methods for the assessment and treatment of psychiatric symptoms in this population as well as studying interactions between indicators of mental and physical well-being. To this end, I have developed a mental health screening program that has been delivered in an urban cardiology clinic and have screened over 1000 patients. I am very interested in learning from this data whether there are differences in symptom presentation across the ethnic groups represented as well as examining the mental health of various subgroups surveyed (e.g., women with heart disease, patients with co-morbid diabetes). Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in these research areas.

Lowe, M.R., Tappe, K.A., Annunziato, R.A., Riddell, L.J, Coletta, M.C., Crerand, C.E., Didie, E.R., Ochner, C.N., & McKinney, S. (In press). The effect of training in reduced energy density eating and food self-monitoring accuracy on weight loss maintenance. Obesity.

Annunziato, R.A., Rubinstein, D., Sheikh, S., Maurer, M., Cotter, G., McKay, M.M., Cotter, O., Gorman, J.M., & Shemesh, E. (2008). Site matters: Winning the hearts and minds of patients in a cardiology clinic. Psychosomatics, 49(5), 386-391.

Shemesh, E., Annunziato, R.A., Shneider, B.L., Dugan, C., Warshaw, J., Kerkar, N., & Emre S. (2008). Improving adherence to medications in pediatric liver transplant recipients. Pediatric Transplantation, 12(3), 316-323.

Annunziato, R.A., Emre, S., Shneider, B.L., Dugan, C.A., Aytaman, Y., McKay, M.M., & Shemesh, E. Transitioning health care responsibility from caregivers to patients: A pilot study aiming to facilitate medication adherence during this process. (2008). Pediatric Transplantation, 12(3), 309-315.

Annunziato, R.A., Rakotomihamina, V., & Rubacka, J.  (2007). Examining the effects of maternal chronic illness on child well-being in single parent families. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 28(5), 386-391.

Shemesh, E., Annunziato, R.A., Yehuda, R.., Shneider, B.L., Newcorn, J.N., Hutson, C., Cohen, J.A., Briere, J., Gorman, J.M., Emre, S. (2007). Childhood abuse, nonadherence, and medical outcome in pediatric liver transplant recipients. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 46(10), 1280-1289.

Annunziato, R.A., Emre, S., Shneider, B.L., Barton, C., Dugan, C.A., & Shemesh, E. (2007). Adherence and medical outcomes in pediatric liver transplant recipients who transition to adult services. Pediatric Transplantation, 11(6), 608-614.

Annunziato, R.A., Lee, J.N., & Lowe, M.R.. (2007). A comparison of weight control behaviors in African-American and Caucasian women. Ethnicity & Disease, 17, 262-267.

Annunziato, R.A. & Lowe, M.R. (2007). Taking action to lose weight: toward an understanding of individual differences. Eating Behaviors, 8(2), 185-194.

Kerkar, N., Annunziato, R., Foley, L., Schmeidler, J., Rumbo, C., Emre, S., Shneider, B., &Shemesh, E. (2006). Prospective analysis of non-adherence in Autoimmune Hepatitis: A common problem. Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology & Nutrition, 43(5), 629-634.

American Psychological Association
Association for Psychological Science