Rachel A Annunziato, PhD

Dr. Annunziato’s research and clinical interests focus primarily on the needs of medically ill children and adults. Currently, she works mainly with pediatric liver transplant recipients. She is interested in the transition to adulthood for adolescents with a medical illness. Dr. Annunziato’s work in this area addresses whether psychiatric and medical outcomes change when patients are shifted from pediatric to adult oriented settings. She is also studying adolescent illness management and developing interventions aiming to improve mastery of health care responsibilities such as medication adherence as well as  expanding her work on transition to college students with special health care needs.

Dr. Annunziato has a long-standing interest in the psychosocial aspects of obesity. She is currently assessing quality of life and psychiatric symptoms in adolescents who have developed liver disease due to obesity and developing interventions to facilitate weight loss and improve medical outcomes for these patients. She is also studying quality of life and family functioning for children diagnosed with and receiving a new treatment for Hepatitis C. Finally, Dr. Annunziato is conducting studies to better understand the mental health needs of children who have a severe food allergy and their caregivers. Her work with medically ill adults has been mainly with underserved, ethnically diverse patients with cardiac disease. Her 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.