Clinical Psychology · PhD Student
Isabel Rooper
Clinical researcher working at the intersections of behavioral medicine, implementation science, and human-centered design.
Education
Clinical Psychology · PhD Student
Clinical researcher working at the intersections of behavioral medicine, implementation science, and human-centered design.
About
I'm Isabel, a Clinical Psychology PhD student with a multidisciplinary background in psychology, public health policy, and food systems. My research aims to (1) design precise, scalable interventions to improve health behaviors and outcomes and (2) implement evidence-based solutions to close “know-do” gaps, bridging the divide between research evidence and real-world practice.
Trained at Yale College and Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, I use qualitative and mixed methods approaches to understand lived experiences of illness and health and design tools around individuals’ needs and preferences. I am mentored by Andrea K. Graham, PhD, in the Advancing Care through Technology (ACT) Lab. We are based in the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies and Northwestern’s Department of Medical Social Sciences, where Dr. Graham is the Division Chief of Implementation Science.
Outside of lab, I enjoy running, bike-commuting along the Lakefront Trail, and proselytizing about blood donation.
Training Focus Areas
My research explores the intersections between mental and physical health. Medical care for chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes rarely considers the behavioral and mental factors that influence disease self-management. For example, while individuals with these illnesses are often told what to eat, they are less often supported in how to eat, leaving them stuck in a gap. Integrating insights from behavioral medicine has potential to transform our approaches to chronic care management.
In my master's thesis, I researched how to adapt a digital binge-eating intervention for adults with type 2 diabetes, toward tailoring psychological supports for healthy eating and physical activity. I am continuing this line of research by investigating how to design and deliver these adaptations. Alongside my research, my clinical training at Northwestern is specialized in behavioral medicine.
Too often, clinical research has yielded tools that fail to engage users or that are impossible to translate into real-world care settings. To maximize the impact of clinical research, we need to design digital health tools that address real needs and fit into people’s lives. Doing so requires engaging target end-users throughout the design process.
In ACT Lab, we use human-centered design methods to integrate end-user perspectives throughout intervention design and implementation through iterative prototyping and qualitative interviews. I have conducted >150 human-centered design sessions, which has made clear the gaps between what we assume users want and what they actually want. My work continues to use human-centered design to bridge the gap between clinical research and real-world impact.
Developing promising interventions is only half the challenge – we also need to ensure that these tools reach the populations they’re designed to serve. Dissemination and implementation science attends to how we reach and engage individuals into intervention, as well as how interventions fit within real-world care settings and health systems. This is a critical lens to apply in clinical research, as no matter how optimized our interventions are, if they don’t reach people, then they won’t yield public health impact.
My research is currently engaging both clinicians and patients in human-centered design sessions, toward ensuring our intervention will integrate within routine diabetes care.
Lines of Research
Digital health interventions are a promising modality for expanding access to mental and behavioral health care, but this promise can only be realized if they are designed with the needs, preferences, and contexts of their users in mind. This line of research applies human-centered design methods to design and iterate on digital interventions across populations, including adults with binge eating, older adults, and adolescents.
Understanding patients’ values can help guide care for adults with multiple chronic conditions and depression/anxiety. Digital interventions, which are poised to bridge gaps in care for these patients, must be designed with flexibility, accessibility, and implementation in mind.
HCD · Chronic CareUsability improvements alone will not fix low digital health adoption in older adults. Instead, a human-centered, implementation-focused approach is needed to address systemic barriers to uptake.
HCD · AgingUntil recently, eating disorder research has largely neglected the role of external constraints, like food insecurity, in driving pathology and reducing treatment efficacy. This gap drives my interests in identifying intervention adaptations to tailor care for individuals with food insecurity. My collaborators and I have investigated the unique psychological and contextual drivers of binge eating among people with food insecurity, and worked to disseminate digital interventions through community-based organizations like food pantries. Understanding how structural conditions shape eating behaviors is essential to designing interventions that are both effective and equitable.
Food pantries are trusted and accessible community spaces for many individuals experiencing food insecurity. Food pantries could be engaged as implementation partners for delivering eating-related interventions, to overcoming structural barriers to care access.
ImplementationCompared to adults without food insecurity, adults with food insecurity preferred learning about digital interventions via community organizations over clinicians, indicating tailored dissemination efforts are needed to meet people where they are.
DisseminationEating disorders and mental health conditions are shaped by stigma and weight bias. We need to attend to these forces, including as clinicians.
Internalized weight bias was identified as reinforcing eating disorder pathology via negative affect. Negative affect is a promising treatment target for interventions.
Stigma · QuantitativeClinicians can play a pivotal role in ensuring digital mental health interventions are effective, culturally responsive, accessible, and safe. It is our duty to actively advocate across these dimensions.
Advocacy · PolicyPublications
News & Updates
Presenting at the Society for Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting
ACT Lab receives American Psychological Foundation grant to develop tailored binge eating intervention for adults with Type 2 Diabetes
Successfully defended master’s thesis entitled, ‘Adapting binge-eating intervention for type 2 diabetes mellitus: Human-centered design study’
Received the OBBI SIG “Up and Coming” Early Career Award at the Society for Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting
Contact
Whether you're interested in my research, want support navigating clinical psychology graduate program admissions, or just want to connect, I'd love to hear from you.