Carolyn Ponting, PhD

Glad to share that I’ll be accepting a PhD student in Counseling Psych at @uoregon this cycle. Those interested in culture, perinatal mental health or positive affect treatments would be a great fit.

See faculty profile for more: education.uoregon.edu/directory/cp...

This SCOTUS decision is not just about what words we can and cannot say in our grants. This ruling will destroy the careers of many scientists, and it will hit trainees and early career researchers the hardest. The future of scientific training and research innovation is at stake.

Trump freezes $200 million in UCLA science and medical research funding, citing antisemitism The Trump administration has frozen roughly $200 million in National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and other federal agency-funded research at UCLA, citing allegations the school d...

Suspension of all grants to UCLA www.latimes.com/california/s...

ACOG is deeply disappointed by HHS’s move to drop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations in pregnancy. The science is clear: COVID-19 remains dangerous in pregnancy and vaccination protects both patients and newborns. The vaccine is safe and protects families. Read our full statement: buff.ly/OGue7sO

Expected, still devastating: my NIH diversity supplement was terminated. Grateful for what it made possible—but horrified to see on NIH letterhead that research aimed at increasing equity “supports unlawful discrimination…which harms the health of Americans.” A false, dangerous & insulting spin.

Graph showing how much competitive federal research funding has slowed under current administration

Current NIH funding slump represents:
- Research labs closing
- PhD students abandoning their dreams.
- Trial participants left to their own devices mid study.
- A halt to scientific progress and innovation for cancer, chronic and infectious diseases.
- Minority health research terminated.
Etc.

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women

www.science.org/content/arti...

Women, minorities fired in purge of NIH science review boards Scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal.

Thirty-eight of 43 experts cut last month from the boards that review the science and research that happens in laboratories at the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by the chairs of a dozen of the boards.

Make massive cuts to federal aid supporting: 1) access to contraception, 2) reproductive health care & 3) perinatal care. Then wipe out systems tracking pregnancy, postpartum and birth outcomes…

If Trump can disappear green card holders for protesting war, he can disappear you.

If he can disappear visa holders for criticizing him, he can disappear you.

If he can disappear asylum seekers for tattoos, he can disappear you.

We must speak out now — before there is no one left to speak out.

F mechanisms are student and postdoc fellowships.

This is the US choking off funding for training the next generation of talent.

Where is the university leadership response?

Under Pressure, Psychology Accreditation Board Suspends Diversity Standards As the Trump administration threatens to strip accrediting bodies of their power, many are scrambling to purge diversity requirements.

Extremely disappointing & cowardly. The American Psychological Association is rescinding diversity requirements. Not due to any actual mandate from the federal government, but only because it may *someday* face pressure from the government www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/h...

NEW: The University of Michigan will end its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives campus wide, the president said in an email

New Utah Law Seeks to Crack Down on Life Coaches Offering Therapy Without a License Some therapists who lose their licenses transition to the unregulated life coaching industry, an investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica found. A new law makes it clear that only license...

NEW: Dozens of life coaches advertised their ability to treat mental health issues, despite not having the training or permits to do so, Utah researchers found.

A new law aims to crack down on the practice by clearly defining what only a therapist can do.

With @sltrib.com

The Stress Puzzle. EPISODE 10 Superwoman Schema: Nuances of stress, resilience, and the superwoman schema framework with Dr. Cheryl Woods Giscombé

🧩 My conversation with Dr. Cheryl Woods Giscombé is out now!

We discussed Dr. Giscombé's work on Superwoman Schema, nuances that stress science has missed among Black women, and her perspective on promising interventions. #scicomm #socialpsych #psychscisky

Listen now: tinyurl.com/superwomansc...

Thanks so much- an ideal compliment!

🧵Yesterday, I received notice that my #NIH grant, on the social environment, lifecourse, epigenetics & #birthoutcomes in Black families, was terminated. This grant represented a critical effort to address the ⬆️ rates of maternal & infant mortality in the US, particularly among Black mothers & babies

The #hiringfreeze impacts all 10 University of California campuses and has devastating effects for students, patients, staff and academics. The damage to higher education will have innumerable ripple effects. This administration's slash and burn agenda is disgraceful.

Effects of Recruitment Messaging on Ethnic/Racial Minority Screening in a RCT for Prenatal Insomnia: An Experimental Approach Using data from a nationwide recruitment campaign for an RCT evaluating digital cognitive behavioral therapy for prenatal insomnia, we tested whether a recruitment message that identified a racial/...

Still, messaging can--and should--be manipulated to increase screening rates of diverse groups in our RCTs. Well designed recruitment studies are vital to enhancing health equity.

This work is open access, and can be read here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

✌️ In pregnancy, sleep challenges can be considered normal (even when they're not)! Sleep problems may have been considered an inherent part of pregnancy experience, weakening the credibility of the sleep disparities message.

👆🏼We drew attention to disparities in the prevalence rates of poor sleep among Latinx/Black people. It's possible that focusing on disparities in the *consequences* of poor sleep may have motivated more screening.

Overall, the disparities message resulted in less screening and the disparities vs. standard message did not impact participants differently depending on their race/ethnicity.

While unexpected, we think the disparities message may have flopped in part b/c...

We randomized pregnant people to receive a study recruitment ad highlighting ethnic/racial disparities in sleep quality, or an identical message without a mention of disparities. Then we looked @ which message resulted in more screening overall & by participant race/ethnicity.

Randomized controlled trials notoriously under-enroll non-white participants.

In this article, we tested whether recruitment messaging could be leveraged to increase the diversity of pregnant people screening into a study for prenatal insomnia.

My annual psych internship rant, now with even more 🔥. The pre-PhD internship is an outdated model that devalues the expertise psych students bring. Now, we may be requiring students to move to unsafe cities and unstable positions, during a stage when healthcare and reproductive rights are critical.