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Culture and Evidence-Based Practice Lab

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What We Do

The Culture and Evidence-Based Practice Lab (CEBP) at DePaul University, led by Dr. Antonio Polo, is dedicated to enhancing mental health services for ethnically diverse and underserved youth. Through research and community collaboration, the lab focuses on developing and adapting evidence-based interventions, such as the Act & Adapt program, to address the mental health needs of children in school settings. Our work emphasizes cultural sensitivity, training mental health professionals, and fostering resilience in youth to improve mental health outcomes.

News

  • Our collaboration with the Office of Social and Emotional Learning in Chicago Public Schools continues into its 8th year. We’ve now trained over 436 providers (school social workers, school counselors, and school psychologists) across more than 200 schools. They were trained in Act & Adapt, a coping skills program to help youth improve their mental health and reduce depression symptoms. For more information about this intervention and our partnerships, please go to www.actanadapt.com.
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  • Congratulations to our 2nd year cohort of STRIDE Scholars. We are supporting the training of 22 interns from school/clinical mental health counseling and social work programs from across 6 programs serving high need schools in Chicago Public School District schools. 
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  • We’re excited to welcome Catherine Garcia-Goetting back to DePaul as an MS student in Research Psychology, following her time as a CEBP undergrad research assistant.
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  • Dr. Jesus Solano-Martinez, former CEBP member and DePaul Clinical Psychology doctoral student, is completing his post-doctoral internship at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.​
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  • Laura Saldana is completing her Clinical Psychology pre-doctoral internship at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
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  • Laura Saldana’s first-author paper, titled Latinx parent-child acculturative stress profiles and their relation to Expressed Emotion and academic achievement, has been published.
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  • Paulina Paredes Cienega successfully defended her dissertation proposal on The Youth Multidimensional Group Fidelity Scale: Psychometric properties and correlates.
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  • Melissa Lopez has successfully defended her master's thesis proposal, titled The relation between pressure to be thin, self-oriented perfectionism, and deliberate self-harm and suicidal ideation in Latinx youth: The moderating effect of loneliness.
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  • Melissa Lopez, Sophia Pitillo, Isabela Moro, and Elizabeth Martinez-Charleston are the recipients of the Doctoral & Undergraduate Opportunities Scholarship (DUOS), which supports DePaul undergraduate students in conducting research alongside doctoral student mentors this year!​​​​
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  • Dr. Antonio Polo, Laura Saldana, & Elizabeth Martinez-Charleston of our lab were featured in a DePaul University Newsline article about the Act & Adapt program! Read more here.
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Join Our Team!

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