Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Virginia and completed a Clinical and Community Psychology Doctoral Residency at Yale University's School of Medicine. She also completed a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Applied Psychology and was a Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Leader at the University of Pennsylvania. On the whole, Dr. Anderson aims to facilitate healing in Black families with practical applications of her research and clinical services, as well as through public engagement, teaching, mentorship, and policy recommendations. Dr. Anderson uses mixed methods to study discrimination and racial socialization in Black families and apply her findings to help families reduce racial stress and heal from racial trauma. She is particularly interested in how family-based interventions help to improve Black youth’s psychosocial well-being and health-related behaviors. Dr. Anderson is the developer and director of the EMBRace (Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race) intervention and loves to translate her work for a variety of audiences, particularly those whom she serves in the community, via blogs, video, and literary articles.

Dr. Anderson’s work has garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, WT Grant Foundation, National Institute of Health, Society for Research in Child Development, and the Michigan Health Endowment Foundation. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and contributed to a range of blogs, articles, and media, including CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Times London, Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Women’s Health, WebMD, and NBC’s Newsroom. Drawing on her scholarly expertise and professional experiences in psychology, Dr. Anderson has consulted with a number of universities, including Michigan State University and Wayne State University and is involved nationally as an appointed member of several work groups, including the American Psychological Association’s Children, Youth, and Families committee and Task Force on the Elimination of Racism, the Society for Research on Adolescence’s Anti-Racism Task Force, and the Society for Research in Child Development’s Equity & Justice Committee. Additionally, Dr. Anderson consults with national companies and organizations, including Google, YouTube, and Nickelodeon. Dr. Anderson also serves as the co-host of Our Mental Health Minute, a multimedia organization geared towards reducing stigma in the Black community.

Along with Dr. Shawn Jones, Dr. Anderson serves as the co-founder, -writer, -producer, and -host of Our Mental Health Minute, a psychoeducational multimedia organization geared towards reducing stigma in the Black community by emphasizing brief culturally-relevant mental health practices and problems. Additionally, for her early career accomplishments, Dr. Anderson has been the recipient of over twenty awards, including national awards from the Society for Research on Adolescence and the Federation of Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. Additionally, Dr. Anderson was also the first Black woman to earn the Society for Research in Child Development Early Career Research Contributions Award and the University of Michigan’s Rachel Upjohn Clinical Scholars Award. Starting in the fall of 2022, Dr. Anderson will be a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Finally, Dr. Anderson was born in, raised for, and returned to Detroit and is becoming increasingly addicted to cake pops.

Psychologists, Psychology, Mental Health, Discrimination Black Heritage, Black History Month, Professors, Education Professionals, Parenting, Social Activism, Civil Rights, Social Justice, Racism, Public Health,