Keeley Pratt, PhD
Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Science
The Ohio State University
Q&A
Who have you admired in your path into the sciences and what qualities did you see in them that you embody in your own path?
I have been lucky to have strong female senior colleagues and mentors in social science and health care. Given that my research combines multiple areas (family science, weight management, social determinants of health/community-based work), I am one of just a handful of people working in this space. As such I have sought out advice and mentorship from colleagues from different disciplines including Dr. Natasha Slesnick (family science), Dr. Ihuoma Eneli (pediatric weight management), and Dr. Noelle Arnold (social determinants of health/community-based work). Each of these women have pushed new innovative projects, training, initiatives needed to address inequity in health or education. Dr. Slesnick has sustained a consistently funded program of research to address disparities among the most vulnerable populations in society. Her mentorship continues to help me develop the ways I write about the innovation of my work and how my work fills a critical need. She mentors countless junior and mid-level women scholars to develop their research portfolios, providing critical feedback to move them forward with their goals. Dr. Eneli is a leader in clinical practice guidelines in pediatric weight management and has helped me to focus my research into pragmatic and feasibility methods to deliver/assess in routine health care. While I can have high aspiring ideas for what might work or would be novel to investigate or test, Dr. Eneli help to keep my ideas relevant to the groups and populations seeking services, and feasible to implement with the provider team. Dr. Arnold is a leader in developing initiatives to address social determinants of health and community engagement, including increasing the pipeline of future scholars from underreprestend groups in academic. In collaboration with Dean Pope-Davis, Dr. Arnold developed the College of Education and Human Ecology Dean’s Diversity Postdoctoral Fellows program. The program provides mentorship, professional development, and resources to postdocs with the intention of transitioning to faculty at the end of the program. I am fortunate to be the current coordinator of the program, and have extensively learned about program creation, management, and quality improvement from Dr. Arnold’s mentorship in these areas.
Can you tell us about a memorable moment in your career—a time when you knew you were working in your purpose?
The Ohio State Comprehensive Center for Weight Managment, Metabolic and Bariatric surgery has an annual conference that providers, staff, faculty, and current and past patients are invited to attend. I present the current work I am doing each year around families and social determinants of health at this conference to gauge the importance and relevance with provider and patient stakeholder groups. Each year attending patients thank me for doing this work and further ask how they can be engaged to help move the work forward in these areas. It’s a great annual check-in to ensure that the work I am doing is both important and reaches the groups the work is intended to benefit.
What is one book or film you would recommend to a young person interested in a career in sciences?
I would recommend the book, We Should all be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lab Girl by Hope Jaren, and Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez.
Career Highlights
- Developed and copyrighted the first psychoeducational intervention, Talking About healthy Lifestyles with Kids – Parent Guide; TALK-PG©), for parents initiating bariatric surgery, which helps parents to introduce the surgery in a developmentally appropriate way to their school age children, engage their children in healthy routines and behaviors, and identify and prevent disordered eating behaviors in their children.
- Conducted a large scale project with colleagues (Drs. Brian Focht, Andrew Hanks, Harvey Miller) to assess various neighborhood-level economic social determinants of health and their impact on bariatric surgery patients’ postoperative weight loss, which has been featured in the top surgical journal in the field due to the novelty of this work.
- Leading scholarship with colleagues (Drs. Bradley Needleman and Sabrena Noria) to assess and publish the high rate of household food insecurity among bariatric surgery patients (25-30%) compared to National US rates (12%).
Biography
Dr. Pratt is an Associate Professor in Human Development and Family Science and Couple and Family Therapy in the Department of Human Sciences in the College of Human Ecology at The Ohio State University (OSU). She also has appointments in the Departments of Surgery and Pediatrics. She completed her doctorate in Medical Family Therapy at East Carolina University, in which she worked as a clinician-researcher in a variety of weight management settings. Dr. Pratt is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She conducts research and is a behavioral health supervisor at OSU’s Comprehensive Center for Weight Management, Metabolic, and Bariatric Surgery. She also is the research director for Nationwide Children’s Hospital Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition. Dr. Pratt has received funding for her work, produced 75 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and has conducted presentations at local, national, and international conferences. Dr. Pratt’s scholarship focuses on family-based and community intervention in pediatric and adult weight management and bariatric surgery contexts. Essentially, she explores and/or address the social determinants of health pertaining to who patients live with (including interpersonal dynamics that affect behavior change) and where they live (including access to healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity) and effects on weight management and surgical outcomes (behavior change, weight loss, readmissions/complications). There are three main foci of her work: 1) determining family factors that predict short and long-term patient outcomes in weight management and bariatric surgery programs; 2) developing family-based interventions to address challenging family dynamics and health behaviors in weight management and bariatric surgery programs; and 3) addressing racial/ethnic and economic disparities among weight management and bariatric surgery patients through the development of targeted community-based supports and resources.
