Jada Hammond, MA

Jada is currently a clinical psychology doctoral student at Loma Linda University’s School of Behavioral Health. She graduated with a BS in Psychology from Oakwood University, a HBCU in Alabama. Jada has always had a passion for working with children and has done so in a couple of different settings, such as being a live-in nanny for a year and a pre-k4 Sunday school teacher. During her first year of graduate school she helped with research involving children with Autism Spectrum Disorder as well as children with sleep disorders. She finds herself interested in a range of topics, such as resilience and self-efficacy, trauma, developmental psychopathology, the impact of culture and many more. However, she is focused on becoming a Pediatric Health Psychologist in order to tackle health disparities among children from underserved communities in primary care settings.

Jada’s doctoral project is a qualitative study of the socio-cultural factors that may affect underreporting of food insecurity in primary care settings. Her aim is to help increase understanding of how socio-cultural factors affect health behaviors and thus health outcomes in ethnic minority groups. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to create targeted interventions based off of these findings to help improve health outcomes in children and ameliorate the effects of health disparities.