Postdoctoral Fellowships

A number of strengths in our program make it a unique and exciting place for graduate or postdoctoral study. Opportunities for training in biopsychosocial bases of health and illness are broad, well developed and still growing. Our faculty has established programs of research on the reciprocal links between psychological and physical health and disease which provide superb venues for research experience. The faculty is composed of scholars with expertise in psychoneuroimmunology; stress, coping, and social support processes; health behavior and behavior change; social neuroscience; and ethnic, racial and sociocultural aspects of health with a range of theoretical and methodological approaches brought to bear on these central themes (e.g., family, individual, community perspectives; experimental, intervention, daily diary, and survey research). In addition, our program offers research opportunities in cancer, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and heart disease, as well as healthy populations. Research programs on depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disease, and schizophrenia by affiliated faculty offer further venues for our students to study comorbidities and integrate mind and body approaches in their research. Finally, our faculty have extensive ongoing interdisciplinary research collaborations in the psychiatry, public health, social science, life science, medical science, and nursing for student involvement. (see training opportunities for more details and links)

Closely supervised research and coursework provide foundations in theoretical approaches to fundamental issues in psychology and in the study of physical and mental health. At the same time, our department and the program offer education in the use of rigorous methodologies for testing theory in laboratory, community, and clinical settings.

Beyond the coursework common to all the majors in psychology, the health psychology major has two required courses. One is a proseminar in health psychology and the other is a course in biological bases of health psychology. These are accompanied by elective seminars chosen from a number of options (see course list). In addition, majors in Health Psychology attend the area lecture series once a week during fall and winter quarters for 3 years. The health psychology faculty members hold weekly lab meetings with graduate students in which important training experience is gained above and beyond individual research supervision and coursework.

Students concentrate primarily on a single research project in the first and second years (Psych 251) culminating with the receipt of the Master's degree. As training progresses thereafter, health psychology predoctoral students typically work with two or more faculty members to develop an increasing focus on their own particular topics in research, and expertise in the associated methods.

The program admits students who have been identified as a good match for at least one faculty member, but we do not operate by a strict apprenticeship model in that students are encouraged to conduct research with at least two faculty members over the course of their doctoral education.

In addition to housing the Health Psychology program, the Department of Psychology is home to additional core areas of study (Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical, Cognitive, Developmental, Learning and Behavior, Quantitiative, and Social), many of which have ties to the Health Psychology program.

The Psychology Department is also affiliated with a number of cross-disciplinary research programs that offer training and research opportunities to Health Psychology trainees.  Some of these are:

• Center for Everyday Lives of Families
• Center for Research, Education, Training and Strategic Communications on Minority Health Disparities
• The Foundation for Psychocultural Research - UCLA Center for Culture, Brain & Development
• Interdisciplinary Relationship Science Program

The Health Psychology program also has strong ties to the David Geffen School of Medicine and the School of Public Health. Past and current trainees have received training and support from a number of interdisciplinary research centers, including but not limited to:

• Center for Neurovisceral Sciences and Women's Health
• Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology
• Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Mindfulness Awareness Research Center
• UCLA HIV/AIDS Institute

The UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP) is organizationally located within the Semel Institute, a division of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Because of the complex nature of drug abuse, training in this field combines substantive, methodological, and practical approaches to research. 

The Institutional Training Grant (ITG) Program is a NIDA funded program to provide training to predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows. The grant provides a modest stipend to each trainee, depending on the length of time from your degree.

We employ a multi-disciplinary training program. Cross-disciplinary knowledge is needed to understand drug abuse etiology, behavior, consequences, and treatment. Substantive topics range from psychopharmacology to the social consequences of drug legislation. The variety of research approaches applicable to an understanding of drug abuse include experimental, quasi-experimental, survey, and naturalistic or ethnographic methods. Further, the unique nature of drug abuse data frequently requires new and creative analytic approaches such as specialized methods for analyzing non-normal data, quantifying data collected through qualitative methods, or merging qualitative and quantitative data. Other requirements include working with large databases and collecting data from drug-dependent populations.

Conducting drug abuse research also requires attention to the practical problems of carrying out a study, such as dealing with issues of confidentiality and ethics, and working with federal, state, and local agencies. Investigators must be prepared for and know how to deal with the compromises that must frequently be made between the requirements of an "ideal" research design and the constraints and difficulties imposed by programs and people in the real world. Furthermore, because of the complexities inherent in this type of research, researchers need to learn up-to-date computer methods of statistical analysis to enhance their own efficiency and make costly data more readily available. Finally, researchers need to develop competent writing and communication skills to disseminate research results effectively.

Each fellow is responsible for his or her own training experience, both in terms of process and outcomes, and is expected to be a self-motivated, adult learner. A wide variety of research training resources are available at ISAP and the larger UCLA community; it is anticipated that fellows will actively seek out and utilize these resources according to individual need and interest. To this end, research training activities may vary widely among fellows reflecting different levels of expertise and experience in drug abuse research methods, and specific areas of interest. Although certain coursework and evaluative components of the training program are relatively fixed, the individual trainee is encouraged to structure his or her research training experience in ways consistent with professional development and career goals. 

The principal goal of the UCLA Dementia and Behavioral Neuroscience Research Fellowship (DRF) is the training and development of excellent clinical neuroscientists who will advance clinical neuroscience research in the areas of dementia and geriatric behavioral neurology. The emphasis of the program is on clinical trials and biomarkers (including imaging) relevant to the development of new treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias.