Dr. Elizabeth McQuaid is professor of psychiatry and human behavior and pediatrics at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI.
Dr. McQuaid's research focuses on psychosocial aspects of pediatric asthma and allergies. She has served as PI and Co-I on numerous federally and privately funded projects investigating disease management in pediatric allergic diseases, including observational studies, qualitative projects, and RCT's. Dr. McQuaid's research focuses on cultural influences on asthma management behavior, such as medication beliefs and barriers to use. Her work has also focused on developmental and social changes that may disrupt disease management and adherence in childhood, such as the transition to high school.
A central theme throughout Dr. McQuaid's work is the goal of improving care for pediatric patients through strategies such as improving medication adherence, integrating smoking cessation strategies into parent education, and enhancing the cultural appropriateness of asthma management interventions. She is also involved in disseminating evidence-based methods, such as home-based asthma education for low-income families, and working toward reimbursable models of asthma education. In addition to her work in pediatric asthma, Dr. McQuaid also collaborates on projects in other pediatric chronic disease areas, including inflammatory bowel disease, leukemia, and food allergies.
Dr. McQuaid's first external funding as a junior investigator was a Social/Behavioral award from the American Lung Association; she later received an American Lung Association Career Investigator award to support her work. Dr. McQuaid has been a research mentor for two junior investigators with early career funding from the Lung Association and served on Lung Association scientific review panels.
Dr. McQuaid received her bachelor's degree in psychology (honors) from Yale University and her Ph.D. in Child Clinical Psychology from the University of Denver. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Brown Clinical Psychology Training Consortium.
