Sampilo-Quispe Award Supports PhD Students and Underserved Populations

The purpose of “The Sampilo-Quispe Award for Equity and Social Justice in Clinical Child Psychology” is to facilitate student-initiated efforts that seek to improve behavioral health and wellness for marginalized and underserved communities. This yearly award was established in 2021 by the generosity of the Sampilo-Quispe family. It has been, and will continue to be, a valuable resource for Clinical Child Psychology at KU.

Calissa Leslie-Miller was chosen for her research project: Dyadic Digital Coping Among Adolescents and Parents in Underserved Communities. Transactional models of stress and coping are understudied in children and families with historically marginalized identities. A major barrier to recruitment has been lack of financial resources to directly address the unique systemic barriers to research participation experienced by families whose voices are often not heard in research. The Sampilo-Quispe award will allow for targeted recruitment of participants from Black, Latino, and Native communities to begin the process of listening to these important voices in a study of real-time indicators of interpersonal and transactional stress with the goal of identifying specific stressors and digital coping strategies that contribute to mental health outcomes.