Guest Faculty

Larry L. Mullins, PhD
Regents Professor and Vaughn Vennerberg Chair of Psychology
Director, Center for Pediatric Psychology
Director of Online Studies
Oklahoma State University

Larry L. Mullins, Ph.D. is Vaughn Vennerberg II Chair of Developmental Disabilities in Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Oklahoma State University, where he has been a faculty member since 1995. He received his BA from Oklahoma State University in 1977, and both his MS and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1983.  He completed an internship with a specialization in the subspecialty of Pediatric Psychology from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Dr. Mullins' research is primarily focused on child and family adjustment to pediatric chronic illness, with an emphasis on identifying factors that predict both resilience and adjustment difficulties in children and their parents. In particular, the role of parent factors (parental overprotection, perceived vulnerability, parenting stress, caregiver burden) and cognitive appraisal variables (e.g., uncertainty in illness, illness intrusiveness) in adjustment outcomes have been key areas of inquiry. Dr. Mullins has studied these processes in a wide variety of health conditions, including pediatric cancer, disorders/differences of sex development, pediatric rehabilitation, Type 1 Diabetes, asthma, JRA, sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, and neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1). He is also quite interested in the development of interventions that target management of illness uncertainty in parents of children newly diagnosed with a significant health problem. He maintains a close working relationship with numerous pediatric specialists at the Children's Hospital, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, where the majority of his research takes place. He also collaborates with colleagues at Cook Children’s Hospital, Cornell University, Colorado Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Children’s Medical Hospital Center, and the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center, among others.

Dana Bakula, PhD
Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow
Children's Mercy, Kansas City

Dr. Dana Bakula is a postdoctoral fellow at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. She received her doctorate from Oklahoma State University and completed her pre-doctoral residency training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Dr. Bakula conducts research on parent mental health and the relationship that this has to child wellbeing among children with complex medical conditions. She specializes in working with children with pediatric feeding disorder and their families. Dr. Bakula is engaged in ongoing clinical work, primarily through providing brief interventions to address parent mental health and interdisciplinary treatment of pediatric feeding disorder. Dr. Bakula is also involved in national efforts to promote parent mental health, including that she is the Co-Chair of the newly established Caregiver Wellbeing special interest group of the Society of Pediatric Psychology.

Local Faculty

Jacob Holzman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine 
Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Pediatric Mental Health Institute, Children’s Hospital Colorado

Dr. Jacob Holzman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine as well as a Licensed Psychologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He received his doctorate from Northern Illinois University and completed training at Dell Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital Colorado. Clinically, Dr. Holzman provides evidence-based interventions for a variety of early childhood concerns (e.g., behavioral, anxiety, selective mutism, trauma). Most often, this work incorporates parents and the family system. Dr. Holzman’s research focuses on parenting stress, parenting, and whether parents’ executive functioning predicts responses to early childhood interventions. Ultimately, this line of work is intended to improve early childhood clinical interventions to better support the mental health and well-being of young children and their caregivers in effective, pragmatic, and equitable ways. 

Christina Studts, PhD, MSPH, LCSW
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine

Dr. Christina Studts is an Associate Professor in Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an Implementation Scientist in the Dissemination & Implementation (D&I) Program in the CU Adult & Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research & Delivery Science (ACCORDS), and Director of the D&I Science Graduate Certificate Program at CU. Following a decade of clinical practice as a licensed clinical social worker with children and families in community mental health, schools, and pediatric primary care settings, she received her doctorate in social work and masters of science in public health at the University of Louisville. Her research seeks to increase the potential public health impact of behavioral parent training through systematic adaptation and implementation with communities and populations who do not typically receive this evidence-based intervention. Her recent and ongoing projects used community-engaged research methods to partner with real-world agencies and organizations in assessing parent and community preferences; adapting the delivery and content of a specific behavioral parent training intervention; and implementing and evaluating the effects of the intervention in two underserved populations: (a) rural Appalachian counties in eastern Kentucky, and (b) parents of deaf/hard-of-hearing preschool-aged children followed in hearing healthcare.