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Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Associate Director of the Mindfulness Center

Overview

Dr. Sun's scholarship is motivated by understanding the role of minority stress (i.e., stigma, discrimination, structural oppression) in health disparities, and developing and evaluating mindfulness-based, community-centered, and technology-mediated interventions for health promotion with communities affected by marginalization, trauma, and adversity. Examples of her work include the development and evaluation of Mindfulness-based Queer Resilience (MBQR) for young sexual and gender minorities, mindfulness to address healthy eating among sexual minority women with a history of early life adversity, and understanding the role of mindfulness for glucose management and diabetes prevention among people with gestational diabetes. These interventions share the principles of addressing stigma and oppression via an awareness- and empowerment-based approach, attending to the interplay of mental health and health behaviors, mixed methods research and community-engaged research to inform intervention development, and employing internet-and mobile-based delivery to reduce barriers and increase accessibility and scalability. Her intervention research has engaged communities in the U.S. and Low-and-Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). 

In addition to clinical trials, an important line of Dr. Sun's research work aims to advance intervention science, particularly in areas of mHealth and mindfulness interventions, through rigorous review methodology (e.g., systematic reviews and meta-analyses). With the rapid growth of clinical trials and data availability in these areas, there is an increasing need for the field to rigorously evaluate the existing evidence across populations, conditions, comparison types, and outcomes to guide implementation and dissemination. Her publications in this area have highlighted methodological weaknesses of the existing mindfulness RCT literature and disparities in outcomes when serving racial and ethnic minorities. 

Dr. Sun's work has appeared on many high-impact journals, such as The Lancet Digital Health, JAMA Network Open, npj Digital Medicine, The Lancet HIV, etc. Her work has been supported by numerous NIH grants and other funding sources, enabling her to address the needs of diverse communities in the U.S. and around the world. Dr. Sun earned her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018. She then completed her clinical psychology residency at Emory University School of Medicine and a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. 

As a licensed psychologist, Dr. Sun's clinical and supervisory work emphasizes affirmative and culturally competent care for racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and mindfulness-based programs. Her research and clinical work have contributed to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of mental health and well-being among marginalized populations in domestic and global settings. 

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

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