Tracy Sbrocco Ph.D.

Education

B.S. in Natural Sciences, University of Akron, Akron, OH
Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, with Health Psychology emphasis, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
Psychology Internship, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Stress & Anxiety Disorders (CSAD), SUNY-Albany, Albany, NY

Biography

Research. Much of Dr. Sbrocco’s research has been designed to examine methods to promote health equity among communities that disproportionately experience health disparities resulting from longstanding systemic structural and institutional inequities and bias. Her work has focused on long-term behavior change in the treatment and prevention of overweight and obesity. She has developed and examined the efficacy of community-based health programs for the military and for African American women in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. She also is involved in research examining racial and ethnic differences in the measurement of psychological constructs. Her work has been funded by the NIDDK and the NIMHD. She served as the research director and then the PI for a NIMHD funded Center of Excellence, the USU Center for Health Disparities from 2003 to 2014 and was recognized with awards from the NAACP and the national DHHS for promoting health equity.

Teaching, Leadership, & Mentorship. In addition to her research strengths, Dr. Sbrocco has held several leadership roles in graduate education and in the university faculty senate, serving as Faculty Senate President in 2016-17 She has directed the USU Medical and Clinical Psychology Graduate Program. She was a founding member of the USU’s American Psychological Association accredited graduate program in Clinical Psychology and was instrumental in establishing the program’s initial curriculum and policies. To build opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, she wrote, administered, and co-directed a NHLBI Institutional Training Grant in Interdisciplinary Behavioral Medicine and Cardiovascular Research Training for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellows in the areas of psychology, public health, nutrition, exercise physiology, and medicine and has supervised doctoral student National Research Service Awards (NRSA; T32). She has dedicated much of her career to promoting a pipeline into graduate and medical education for groups underrepresented in psychology and medicine. She has mentored twenty three doctoral students as dissertation. Dr. Sbrocco is course director for several graduate courses (Psychopathology, Health Psychology, Group Psychotherapy) and within USU’s med student curriculum, she teaches in the GI, the Reproductive Endocrine, and the Multi-Systems Modules. In 2020, she received USU’s Outstanding Biomedical Graduate Educator Award.

Recent student dissertation topics:
• The Effect of Stress and Coping on Military and Civilian Health Care Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic, 1 LT Misha Strage, 2023
• Veteran Homelessness and Military Readiness, 2LT Baylee Crone, 2022
• The Impact of the Strong Black Woman Schema, Stigma, and Discrimination on Formal Mental Health Seeking Intentions among Modern Day Black Women, Maj Katrina Powell, 2020
• Historical Trauma, Discrimination, Self-efficacy, Cultural Affiliation, SES, and Obesity within a Native Hawai’ian Population, CPT Sade Soares, 2019
• The Effect of Food Marketing and Attentional Biases on Eating Behaviors in African American Adolescent Girls, Omni Cassidy, 2019
• Evaluating the Relationship between Weight Stigma and Body Weight in a Short Term Weight Gain Prevention Program for Active Duty Military Service Members, CPT Kendra Oldham, 2019
• Commanders Perspectives on Army Pregnancy and Postpartum Physical Training (P3T), Military Pregnancy, and Policy. CPT Sarah McCreight, 2017
• Breastfeeding Initiation and maintenance among African Americans and Blacks enrolled in a nurse home visitation program. Maj Jennifer Henderson, USAF, 2014

Representative Bibliography