APF Announces Mei Rasin-Waters Fund for Integrated Care
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, EIN Presswire — The American Psychological Foundation in conjunction with Donna Rasin-Waters, PhD, announces the establishment of the Mei Rasin-Waters Fund.
This grant is in honor of Dr. Rasin-Waters’ daughter, Mei, who has benefited from access to an integrated care team in the treatment of her cleft lip/palate. Over a period of 20 years, Mei has received multiple operations and undergone hundreds of hours of therapy and rehabilitation to correct her cleft lip and palate.
“The arc of cleft lip/palate treatment is long. As a mother, I can’t think of a greater challenge than walking out of the operating room so many times when my daughter was an infant, a toddler, a child, teen, and young adult,” said Dr. Rasin-Waters. “As a psychologist, I look forward to the improvements in healthcare delivery this fund sets out to achieve by encouraging mental and behavioral healthcare alongside the complex medical procedures in cleft care.”
Sharing on the experience of working with an integrated care team, Mei Rasin-Waters said “I had the fortune of working with a team of professionals who weren’t just invested in my medical care but were invested in me personally. That benefited me a lot.”
This fund will support the Mei Rasin-Waters Integrated Care Team Research Grant. This program is dedicated to psychological and neuropsychological research on integrated care teams treating cleft lip/palate. Intended recipients for the grant are psychologists or other health researchers working with an integrated care team.
“This fund is an exciting opportunity for APF to expand our areas of funding in our Visionary priority of the connection between health care and behavior,” said APF CEO Michelle Quist Ryder, PhD. “We look forward to supporting innovations in the research into integrated care and its benefits, both psychologically and as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.”
Dr. Mary Clark, a donor to the fund, shared the following. “Cleft lip/palate is a unique, multi-surgery, multi-recovery, life-long to adulthood, repeated difficult medical and psychological events. Hopefully, the research will provide ideas, guidelines, testimonies of what does and does not provide best psychological practices for the patients, the care teams, their families, and support systems. The opportunity for this research is to delve into a common but severely under-studied area of human experience.”
The Mei Rasin-Waters Fund for Integrated Care is currently accepting donations via the APF website and at apflegacy@apa.org.
Additional details on the program will be available on the APF website upon its launch.
For inquiries, please contact APF Communications Associate Bethany Giblin, DES at bgiblin@apa.org.
View Release on EIN Presswire.
To make a donation to support this fund, visit this page and select “The Mei Rasin-Waters Fund for Integrated Care” from the dropdown.