By Andrea Augustine and Lois De Leon
Julie Dinh is a 3rd year graduate student at the CORE lab. She graduated with highest honors in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Julie worked in a developmental and social psychology laboratory and did an honors thesis on rejection sensitivity. Before coming to Rice University, she performed research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. At UCSF, Julie studied the effect of racial discrimination on long-term health outcomes. At the San Francisco VA Medical Center, Julie worked in clinical psychology, examining how veterans assimilate back into society after they return from service. In the realm of public health, she researched ways in which law enforcement officers can be more sensitive to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.
Julie’s research interests have always revolved around empowering people and advocating for those who are vulnerable or victimized in some way.
After winning the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a very competitive, three-year fellowship, she had her research project. Julie studies making healthcare providers more culturally competent and sensitive, especially through training. Currently, Julie is working in conjunction with the Texas Children’s Hospital and their critical care department. She has been surveying healthcare providers and patients about aspects of patient care that pertain to culture. The next steps for the project include synthesizing those findings to develop a training program that future doctors, nurses, and healthcare team members will use to treat and communicate with patients.
Julie believes that her research is important because of “how interdisciplinary it is.” She has been able to “combine all [her] different experiences in clinical, social [and] health psychology and public health and put it in an I/O framework.” She knows that her project has a major real-world implication–helping people get better healthcare. From the stories she has heard from patients, physicians, and nurses, she really feels that there is a need for “urgent, impactful work to be done.” Julie says this about her research: “people slip through the cracks in the healthcare system and don’t have their voices heard; [they] get bad care and [this leads to] higher rates of morbidity and mortality. My research feels like a very tangible way to help change that.”
Julie always knew that she wanted to do research, but it took much longer for her to commit to her specific field and mentor. When deciding on Rice, she loved the campus setting and community. Julie cites the amazing faculty and the focus on teams and training research as factors that drew her to the CORE lab. She believes that CORE’s broad focus was key in incorporating stress and cultural competency into the lab’s mission.
In the future, she sees herself as a faculty member in an interdisciplinary department, possibly public health. For where the CORE lab might go in the future, Julie points to the current shift to qualitative research. She is confident that the lab will maintain its partnerships with NASA and the Texas Medical Center and says the lab may even expand to industries, given its location in Houston.
As a graduate student, Julie enjoys the autonomy and flexibility of her schedule. Though the schedule can be overwhelming at times due to overlapping deadlines, those times are far and few between. For those considering graduate school, Julie suggests thinking about long-term goals beyond the five years they will be a student. In addition, although it is tempting to question one’s decision about school, mentor, and field, she says it is important to “just trust yourself and move forward, and usually everything works out.”