SCCAP Fellows Committee Update

SCCAP Fellows Committee Update

By Martha C. (Marcy) Tompson, PhD
Chair, SCCAP Fellows Committee

By Martha C. (Marcy) Tompson, PhD
Chair, SCCAP Fellows Committee

Our Initial Fellows were announced in Denver at the APA Convention in August. This exemplary group was recommended by the SCCAP Fellows Committee, was positively reviewed by the APA Fellows Committee, and will officially be Fellows of APA/SCCAP in January 2026. Congratulations to this outstanding group of Initial Fellows: Kevin Antshel, PhD, Amanda Jensen-Doss, PhD, and Amy West, PhD. In addition, we have one SCCAP Fellow (already an APA Fellow in another Division):  James H. Bray, PhD.  The Fellows Committee unanimously agreed that each of these Initial and SCCAP Fellows had made outstanding and extraordinary contributions to the field of child and adolescent mental health. Congratulations to all our new Fellows!

Fellow status is a valued honor and recognizes outstanding contributions, with national impact, to Psychology overall and to SCCAP specifically. As Fellows Chair I am taking opportunities to showcase some of our wonderful SCCAP Fellows. This issue we introduce (or re-introduce to the many who know her and her stellar work) Dr. Martha Wadsworth, who became a Fellow on January 1, 2025.

If you are interested in becoming an SCCAP Fellow, you are encouraged to apply!  Applications for the 2026 cycle are not due until December 1, 2025, so you have time. Please be aware that your APA dues must be up-to-date and membership in both APA and SCCAP must be current at the time of application. For information on requirements, please visit the SCCAP website.

Featured Fellow: Dr. Martha E. Wadsworth

Dr. Martha E. Wadsworth is a Professor of Psychology and core member of the Child Clinical Psychology doctoral program at the Pennsylvania State University. She is a licensed psychologist who provides clinical supervision of doctoral students and consultation to local schools. She has held numerous leadership roles at Penn State, including Director of Clinical Training, Interim Co-director of the Psychological Clinic, Co-director of the CTSI Community Engagement Core, and the Associate Director of the PACT University-Community collaborative. Dr. Wadsworth has been actively involved in APA governance and other service to the field. She served as a Council Representative for SCCAP, chaired the APA Committee on Socioeconomic Status, served various editorial roles on numerous journals, and reviews grants for multiple foundations and institutes, including National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health (NCI, NIAAA, NIMH).

Her research focused on improving understanding of and developing strength-based interventions for youth exposed to chronic stress, trauma, and poverty, has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health and Development, National Science Foundation, and the Administration of Children and Families. Dr. Wadsworth’s early studies revealed the functional utility of poverty-related stress-adapted ways of being, highlighting how chronic stress shapes coping, self-regulation, stress physiology, and many other behaviors in ways that are effective and useful for survival in difficult developmental contexts, but which look like deficits when considered out of context. Wadsworth’s Adaptation to Poverty-related Stress (APRS) framework was borne of these early studies and describes this cohesive, malleable, reflexive system of biological, cognitive, behavioral, and affective adaptations that occur in response to chronic uncontrollable stress, and which can be leveraged in interventions. The APRS serves as the guiding theoretical framework for one of the first biologically potent preventive mental health interventions for adolescents in poverty, the Building a Strong Identity and Coping Skills (BaSICS) program. Having demonstrated the early efficacy of BaSICS in a 5-year NIMH-funded experimental therapeutics clinical trial, Dr. Wadsworth is currently further evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of BaSICS in several studies. This includes conducting a NIMH-funded confirmatory efficacy trial aimed at treating adolescent depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress via coping skills, identity development, collaborative action, and biological stress response recalibration, as well as collaborating with investigators in the Netherlands to develop and evaluate a culturally and linguistically adapted Dutch version of BaSICS.