Riana Anderson, Ph.D., Depression Center's Next Rachel Upjohn Scholar, Aims to Improve Race-Related Depression in Black Families

Riana Elyse Anderson, Ph.D., assistant professor with the U-M School of Public Health, just earned a $50,000 research award through the U-M Depression Center. Dr. Anderson will use her Rachel Upjohn Scholar Award funding to better understand how to reduce racism-related depression in Black families.

Dr. Anderson’s project is titled “Reducing Racism-Related Depression in Black Families: Improving Racial Socialization Competency through a Culturally-Informed Therapeutic Intervention.” She will use culturally-responsive and tailored interventions focused on discrimination and depression, which may reduce mental health disparities for Black youth and contribute to greater wellness by improving familial and clinician processes.

Through the Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace) intervention, trained clinicians and black families will tackle the challenges and joys of Black family life through a five-week culturally-specific therapeutic program with hypothesized reduction in depressive symptoms over the course of the program and assessment period.

“It is an absolute privilege and joy to work with black families through therapeutic practice and research initiatives,” said Dr. Anderson. “The Rachel Upjohn Clinical Scholars Award truly blends my interests in innovative clinical strategies to decrease depressive symptoms and population-specific determinants of health—like racism—to improve health and wellness for black adolescents and their families. The award will help to fund an randomized controlled trial of EMBRace in Detroit which will be conducted with community partners at The Children’s Center and Black Family Development, Inc.”

The EMBRace program is one of the few data-driven and family-based interventions focusing on discrimination and racial communication for families and clinicians – this dual-pronged approach helps tackle problems within service provision and supports families to address these issues within their personal ecosystems.

The aim of the Rachel Upjohn Scholar Awards program is to train a new generation of clinical investigators focusing their research on depression, bipolar disorder, and related illnesses. The program offers support to young researchers who have chosen to devote a major part of their research efforts toward the study of depression. The fund honors Rachel Mary Upjohn Meader. Mrs. Meader and her husband Edwin were among the most ardent supporters of the mission and work of the Depression Center during their lifetimes.