Dr. Teresa K. O'Leary is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biostatistics Department (Health Informatics Division) at the Yale School of Public Health. Before graduate school, Dr. O'Leary held various roles in the healthcare industry, both in direct care and research positions. Early in her career, Dr. O'Leary was a mental health case manager and human rights advocate. In 2012, she transitioned to a clinical research associate role at Yale University's School of Medicine. Through both experiences, Dr. O'Leary envisioned a career combining her passion for health equity research, service delivery, and technology. Dr. O’Leary earned her interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Personal Health Informatics from Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences and Bouvé College of Health Sciences. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. O’Leary takes a socioecological approach to her work, where she conducts in-depth fieldwork and utilizes an iterative design approach to design, build, and evaluate the impact of software tools on helping people manage their health to achieve the quality of life they aspire to. Dr. O’Leary’s dissertation focused on the co-design and evaluation of a smartphone-based mental health promotion intervention to enhance readiness for professional mental health treatment in church-affiliated Black adults. This work aimed to (1) reduce mental health stigma in historically Black churches and (2) activate community members to facilitate the care-seeking intentions of others experiencing mental illness within their communities. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. O’Leary looks forward to supporting CHIL’s research mission and goals while advancing her own research agenda—designing technologies that take an asset-based approach to advancing health equity in marginalized communities.
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I’m a music theater kid at heart who will burst into song without warning. If you want to win me over—talk Broadway.