Christopher C. Cushing, Ph.D.
Dr. Cushing earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology from the University of Kansas, under the mentorship of Dr. Ric Steele, with an APA-Accredited Internship specializing in Behavioral Medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. In 2012 He joined the faculty of the Clinical Psychology Program, in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University at the rank of Assistant Professor. After two years at OSU he accepted an invitation to rejoin the Clinical Child Psychology Program at the University of Kansas as faculty. He is active in the fields of pediatric psychology and health psychology serving on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology and Health Psychology. He is also an Associate Editor for Journal of Child and Family Studies.
Contact Information
1000 Sunnyside Avenue
2011 Dole Human Development Center
Lawrence, KS 66045
Research Interests
Dr. Cushing's program of research aims to deliver on the promise of digital technology to understand and improve pediatric health behavior. The long-term goal of this work is to use digital technology to improve the physical and mental health of children and their families by influencing key behaviors such as diet, physical activity, and sleep. In working toward this goal recently, his work has focused on developing digital assessment tools and research methodologies capable of fully harnessing the potential and novel impact of digital technologies. The core of what he does is to use smartphones and sensors to gather and make inferences using a large number of data points from a given individual (in addition to leveraging group-level data). He also has an interest in measure development, and have collaborated with several groups to help develop clinical tools to assess pediatric Health-Related Quality of Life.
Honors
2017 recipient of the Routh Early Career Award in Pediatric Psychology
Publications
Cushing, C. C., & Steele, R. G. (2010). A meta-analytic review of eHealth interventions for pediatric health promoting and maintaining behaviors. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 35, 937-949. doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsq023
Cushing, C. C., Brannon, E. E., Suorsa, K. I., & Wilson, D. K. (2014). Systematic review and meta-analysis of health promotion interventions for children and adolescents using an ecological framework. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 39(8), 949-962. doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsu042
Brannon, E. E., Cushing, C. C., Crick, C. J., & Mitchell, T. B. (2016). The promise of wearable sensors and ecological momentary assessment measures for dynamical systems modeling in adolescents: A feasibility and acceptability study. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 6(4), 558-565. doi:10.1007/s13142-016-0442-4
Cushing, C. C., Mitchell, T. B., Bejarano, C. M., Walters, R. W., Crick, C. J., & Noser, A. E. (2017). Bidirectional associations between psychological states and physical activity in adolescents: A mHealth pilot study. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsw099
Fedele, D. A., Cushing, C. C., Fritz, A., Amaro, C. M., & Ortega, A. (in press). Mobile health interventions for improving health outcomes in youth: A meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics.