Interview with Laura Mackner

Laura, can you give us a professional snapshot of who you are?

I have several roles and titles etc., as you can see by my signature. I primarily conduct research as an Investigator in the Center for Biobehavioral Health at Nationwide Children's (NCH). That's about 85% of my job.  I also do some clinical work, primarily with children with IBD, as a child psychologist working with the IBD team and in the Division of Pediatric Psychology at NCH.  This is primarily outpatient psychotherapy, although in the past I have also done inpatient consults and work in the GI Clinic.  Finally, I have an academic appointment at Ohio State University, in the College of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics, providing training and supervision to psychology and GI interns, residents and fellows. What will you be sharing at the Community Conference?

I'll be leading a breakout session on peer mentoring and giving a presentation on psychosocial issues in pediatric IBD.

For the session on peer mentoring, I'll (1) discuss some of the research on mentoring programs and some of the "best practices" that have been developed from this research, (2) identify some practical resources for developing a mentoring program that exist, and (3) we'll spend most of the session discussing challenges specific to developing a peer mentoring program for youth with IBD.  I'll discuss the peer mentoring program I've been running at NCH, and I hope to brainstorm with the participants in the session about some of the challenges that all mentoring programs face (e.g., recruiting male mentors) as well as some of the challenges specific to IBD mentoring programs (e.g., confidentiality, mentor-mentee matching issues).  Jennie David and Isabelle Linguiti will be joining me to sharing their experiences with formal and informal mentoring and help with brainstorming as well.

For the presentation on psychosocial issues, I'll be discussing psychosocial issues that affect patients and families living with IBD, and how psychosocial issues can also affect health outcomes in IBD.   We know that IBD can affect pretty much any area of life, so I'll be reviewing the research on overall quality of life, emotions, social life, school, and family.  I'll also review research on the risk factors that have been identified that suggest which children are more likely to experience problems in these areas.  Then I'll discuss how psychosocial factors can affect IBD, and things we can do to address psychosocial issues that may also affect IBD. How does this session/focus pertain to parents?  Or how can parents use the information as part of our mission to help improve care.

For peer mentoring, we initially ran focus groups to develop our program, and our NCH parents had a lot of great ideas.  I'd love to hear from the ICN parents, and I hope the information provided in the session will be useful for any parents who are interested in developing a mentoring program.

For the presentation on psychosocial issues, parents certainly play a role in the psychosocial health of their children, and I'll specifically be discussing ways we might be able to improve psychosocial and physical health.