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

Overview

How do stress and various forms of adversity, including structural oppression and stigma, shape mental health and health behavior outcomes? Can mindfulness and digital interventions promote resilience and facilitate a more fulfilling life, especially for those most in need? What is the role of digital technology in mental health, especially for those who are young and vulnerable? 

Dr. Sun's scholarship seeks to answer these pressing questions by interdisciplinary research at the intersection of mindfulness, mobile health (mHealth), and youth mental health. Her scholarship focuses on understanding how stress, trauma, and systemic inequities contribute to health disparities, and developing and evaluating mindfulness-based, community-centered, and technology-mediated interventions for health promotion in domestic and global settings.

Examples of her work include the development 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 mindfulness for youth affected by war and conflict. 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 in many high-impact journals, such as The Lancet Digital Health, JAMA Network Open, npj Digital Medicine, The Lancet HIV, etc. Currently, she serves as the Associate Editor on JMIR-Mental Health. 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. She has been a recipient of numerous teaching and research awards, including from Brown University, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Prevention Research.  

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

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