PhD, Social Psychology, Quantitative Emphasis, Arizona State University, 1997.
The broad goals of Dr. Bryan's work are to use biopsychosocial models of health behavior to design, implement, and evaluate theory-based behavior change interventions to improve preventative health behavior. Highly innovative aspects of her work involve using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and DNA collection to test key genetic, epigenetic, and neurocognitive moderators and mediators of intervention effects and examine theory-based linkages between biological and social cognitive factors.
Dr. Bryan’s interests in cannabis involve the full spectrum of harms and benefits. She is interested in the harms of cannabis use for adolescents because of its association with other risk behaviors (e.g., unprotected sexual activity), as well as currently conducting work to understand the potential benefits of cannabis use among individuals with cancer, as a way to help alleviate the side effects of their disease or treatments. Finally, she is interested in the effects of cannabis use on lifestyle (diet, exercise) and metabolic (insulin function, inflammation) antecedents of Type 2 Diabetes.