Speaker

Henry Willis, PhD

Assistant Professor, Director of the Cultural Resilience, Equity, and Technology (CREATE) Lab
University of Maryland at College Park

Henry A. Willis, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a first-generation college student who is originally from Jackson, Mississippi. Dr. Willis received his Ph.D. from the Clinical Psychology program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed an APA-accredited internship at Montefiore Hospital/Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Willis joined the faculty of the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Maryland, College Park as a tenure-track assistant professor in Fall 2023. He is the creator and director of the Cultural Resilience, Equity, and Technology (CREATE) Research Lab at UMD College Park. His program of research includes exploring the relationship between online and offline racial discrimination and mental health outcomes among African American youth and young adults, understanding sociocultural protective factors (i.e., racial identity) and how they impact psychopathology within African Americans, creating cultural adaptations of evidence-based treatments, and utilizing mobile-health technologies to increase access to mental health treatments for underserved populations. Recent projects include NIH- and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded studies that explore: the experience of online racism via social media among Black adolescents, digital sociocultural protective factors, and developing/piloting culturally-tailored digital interventions (e.g., mental health apps, AI mental health chatbots, VR, etc.) for treating mental health among Black youth and young adults.

COI Statement: Dr. Willis has nothing to disclose.