Cindy Veldhuis
Dr. Cindy Veldhuis (pronounced Veld-hice) is an associate research scientist and a research psychologist at the Columbia University School of Nursing. Broadly, her research focuses on LGBTQIA+ relationships and health as well as violence, trauma, mental health, and the impacts of sociopolitical events on wellbeing. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2016 and completed her masters (Cognitive Psychology) and bachelors (double major: Theater and Psychology) at the University of Oregon. She recently completed an individual NIH/NIAAA Ruth Kirschstein Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (NIH F32AA025816) at Columbia University focused on intersectionality in the associations between relationships and hazardous drinking. She is also a current K99/R00 Pathway to Independence awardee (K99AA028049; Dr. T. Hughes at Columbia is co-mentor with Dr. J. Pachankis at Yale) from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Veldhuis’ K99/R00 takes a novel mixed-methods approach to examining associations between stress and alcohol use among women in same-sex relationships. She has over 40 peer-reviewed publications and 3 book chapters, and in 2019 was invited to give a talk on the effects of the 2016 election on LGBTQ+ people at the United Nations. Dr. Veldhuis recently served on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health COVID-19 Mental Health Measurement Task Force. Early on in the pandemic, this task force worked with existing longitudinal studies to include mental health measures to assess the impact of the pandemic on mental health. She also is PI of an international and longitudinal study on mental health and relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was recently appointed co-chair of the Science Committee of the American Psychological Associations Division 44 (the division focused on LGBT health). Dr. Veldhuis has won multiple awards for her research, including awards from the American Psychological Association and the Research Society on Alcoholism/NIAAA.