JILLIAN HOLBROOK
Leading with Excellence, Resilience, Integrity, Ambition, and Empathy.
Clinical Psychology Researcher at Seattle Children’s Sibley Lab
Understanding and diversifying psychiatric care treatment landscapes for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Overview
As a departmental honors psychology student, I matched with Dr. Margaret Sibley from Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences to conduct an original clinical psychology research thesis. The Sibley Lab focuses on understanding treatment landscapes and creating efficacious behavioral interventions for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD psychopathology arising from unique combinations of biological, social, psychological, and sociocultural factors, there is a necessity for diverse treatments that are affordable, accessible, and carry high levels of efficacy.
In my role as a lead undergraduate researcher and outreach coordinator for the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching, a study conducted by the University of Washington in partnership with the ADHD Coaches Organization, I am examining the role of peer support and lived experience in treating ADHD. Through the honors program, I am broadening my scientific literacy and communication as a conference presenter and senior research author. Moreover, by adapting my senior thesis into a published scientific paper and aking rigorous research credit hours, I am challenged to heighten my problem-solving, team, and communication skills.
Personal Importance of Work
Autumn 2024: At the 2024 International Conference on ADHD in Anaheim, CA, I recruited research participants for the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching, where I served as a lead undergraduate researcher.
I aspire to become a physician-researcher and joined the departmental honors program to improve my scientific writing and literacy skills in a clinical psychology setting while concurrently broadening my cultural competence. Because of the significant treatment barriers for behavioral disorders in the United States, including clinical care access limitations from provider shortages and the lack of affordable healthcare, which are particularly concerning in light of the rising rates of diagnosis for disorders like ADHD, I am interested in how research on accessible behavior interventions may increase care access. Since ADHD is a highly heterogeneous disorder—meaning the symptoms and experiences of the condition differ substantially across patients and the lifespan—patients need options for diverse forms of care to achieve well-being and navigate social and occupational functioning and target the disorder’s diverse manifestations.
My role as a researcher aligns with my passion for translational medicine and improving psychiatric care interventions because I can apply scientific knowledge and empathy to enhance human wellness and health. By studying the efficacy of ADHD Coaching as a potential evidence-based treatment option, I am working to characterize how ADHD Coaches teach ADHD clients organizational and other life skills to manage symptoms. Characterizing this intervention and the population of professionals who deliver it has implications for alleviating the number of clients that clinical providers see. Based on my interest in becoming a physician-researcher, this role amounts to important clinical and research work that can benefit a broad clinical population and foster increased care access.
Tasks Accomplished:
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Developed the research measures for the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching with Dr. Margaret Sibley, Dr. Melissa Dvorsky, and an advisory committee of professionals in the ADHD community
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Coded and designed the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching website
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Recruited participants as an Innovative Programs Presenter at the 2024 National Conference on ADHD in Anaheim, California
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Identified 2,000+ eligible ADHD Coach participants and facilitated outreach strategies to reach this target population
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Manages the official study email and social media accounts: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
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Coordinates email outreach strategies and content creation to promote national engagement
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Oversees contact data and survey distribution
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Presents on outreach metrics at weekly team meetings
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Conducting an original research thesis on the role of peer support and lived experience in ADHD Coaching
Leadership Competencies Gained
Research
My work as an undergraduate researcher has progressed my knowledge of scientific methods from theoretical to practical. I have developed two years of experience with survey research, including study design, participant recruitment, and data cleaning/analysis for the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching and the STRIPES ADHD Intervention for Seattle schools. Moreover, through writing my research thesis, I am challenged to analyze scientific literature and form relevant connections with my own hypotheses on a topic that has little to no existing formal research. This work is both exciting and inherently difficult, as student scientists are often taught research methods on the level of replication rather than given the reins in developing a novel research study.
Functioning Independently
Although Dr. Margaret Sibley serves as my research mentor, I am trusted to conduct my research tasks without oversight, which means taking the initiative to solve problems independently and generate creative strategies to achieve progress. At the beginning of my work as a lead undergraduate researcher on the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching, our research team needed an official study website; however, none of the team members had any background in website development or coding. Although I had prior experience with web design, I had never coded a website from scratch before and was challenged to independently learn and create a functional, aesthetic website without personal guidance. Additionally, I am frequently entrusted with sensitive management tasks that the lead researchers, including my mentor, believe I am capable of completing, such as managing the distribution of our survey and replying to research assistant and participant questions.
Organization
Through my position as a lead undergraduate researcher on the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching, I manage all of the outreach platforms used to encourage participation and collect contact information. These platforms include social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter), the official study email account, and the research study website. Each platform requires detail-oriented organization strategies to keep track of contacts and reply to messages in a timely manner for technical support or questions about the study. Additionally, I run email campaigns through CreativeMail, a mailing software where I divide contacts into relevant lists, like participants who have signed up to receive a link to the survey, businesses who are sharing about our research with their employees, and study collaborators who have been involved with designing the research survey or assisting in outreach efforts. Email campaigns sent to upwards of 700 ADHD professionals at a time must be crafted with precision and timed for engagement analytics, such that recipients get messages in their inbox at an appropriate time across multiple timezones.
Moreover, I helped identify and contact over 2,000 eligible study participants about participating in our research. Through Microsoft SharePoint software, I organize contact information to include a participant’s name, email, and other pertinent contact information; these contact IDs are then updated to reflect each individual’s study progress, such as when a potential participant signs up to take the study or when a research assistant contacts them with a message about our work. By tracking who is involved and using organizational software, I ensure that outreach efforts are efficient and that data is collected and stored appropriately to uphold research standards.
Winter 2025: Turning Up the Heat on Outreach. I designed this heatmap graphic post as part of an outreach campaign to encourage national engagement, which displays a map of the United States with preliminary zip code data from ADHD Coaches who participated in the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching. In addition to posting this graphic on our research team's official Facebook and Instagram platforms, I used it as part of a series of national campaign emails to over 700 eligible study participants, which explained preliminary research findings and reminded ADHD Coaches to submit their completed surveys before the study concluded.
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I had complete control and creative freedom to design outreach materials for the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching. Through the multimodal outreach strategies our study implemented, I helped recruit 481 validated respondents, which powered our survey to generalize to a national audience. I am proud to see how our results can inform an important research agenda and how my outreach efforts contributed to our study's success.
Ethics
As a clinical researcher, I am trusted to handle sensitive information from participants and apply best practices in the use and organization of research data. Through my training, I completed credentialing programs on health information privacy and security for clinical investigators and social and behavioral responsible conduct of research. Scientists do not falsify or misrepresent data and must work to uphold research study methods approved by an institutional review board. In research assistant tasks, I have handled data from hundreds of young adults engaging with ADHD behavioral interventions and kept contact information for thousands of ADHD Coaches securely organized. I take my commitments seriously as a clinical researcher to do no harm and conduct science in an ethical way. Moreover, my research question is centered on understanding the role of peer support in ADHD Coaching, and this question was selected because researching the influence of identity on coaching practices contributes to understanding the field and what can lead to ADHD Coaching becoming recognized as a best practice in ADHD care. Ethical research design seeks to deliver findings that benefit research participants, and my work is based with that principle in mind.
Productive Relationships
The research team on the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching consists of five primary members, including myself. As an undergraduate researcher, I have been given a unique platform and opportunity in designing the research study and am extended privileges and voice on study implementation due to the depth and nature of my involvement on the project. My mentor has high expectations of my capabilities, and I work ardently to contribute to our team’s success and share insights through presenting at and collaborating in weekly team meetings through generating ideas, listening to team members, and assisting with task assignment for research assistants in the lab helping with study outreach. Productive relationships allow teamwork to occur across the levels of lead researcher, postdoctoral fellow, lead undergraduate researcher, and the research assistants.
Writing
In writing my departmental honors senior-level thesis, I function as a scientific communicator to document my hypotheses, methods, and findings, which allows me to derive meaningful conclusions from data and create a research framework for other scientists to replicate. However, in addition to my thesis and translating my thesis into a publishable scientific paper, I also apply writing in persuasive and informational ways to explain my lab’s research study and convince participants to engage.
By reducing jargon and using concise points, I translate scientific concepts for a general audience, which includes neurodiverse professionals. Through captioning posts on social media or formulating email outreach campaigns that describe our research project, writing to tailored audiences is a foundational skill in my role as an undergraduate researcher, which allows me to work with research participants, other researchers, and my research team.
Spring 2025: Knowing Me, Knowing You. My University of Washington Psychology Honors Thesis examined how lived experience with ADHD influenced ADHD Coaching, a type of behavioral intervention to help individuals with ADHD develop skills to manage executive functioning challenges. I am interested in how peer support can be leveraged by non-clinical, 'lay providers' to improve the diversity and efficacy of treatments.
Lessons Learned
The Sibley Lab is located at Seattle Children's Research Institute
My time as a lead honors undergraduate researcher in the Sibley Lab has allowed me to put my scientific knowledge into practice, and I am excited and grateful to make meaningful contributions to the clinical psychology field. This role has expanded my competencies as a scientist and as a clinical investigator, which I approach with integrity, empathy, and a commitment to ethics. In addition to developing myself as a communicator in the research conference setting and in written mediums, I have also advanced my scientific literacy and understanding of best practices in research methodology.
However, I have encountered frustrations and learned about my ability to navigate conflict and change. By being challenged to complete tasks outside the scope of my existing knowledge without support, I have developed functional independence while also learning how to advocate for increased access to resources and opportunities to delegate tasks to research assistants in order to have the necessary time to acquire additional skillsets without guidance. I am continuing to define what a productive relationship means to me, but I know that I have learned that feeling comfortable asking for additional support or communicating problems about team dynamics is an essential skill for collaboration.
Artifacts
Winter 2023 - Spring 2025: Accessible Science. My Department of Psychology senior research presentation (above) and the U.S. National Survey on ADHD Coaching website (below) represent two years of work endeavoring to translate and communicate scientific research to varying public audiences. I designed the outreach survey materials based on color theory research to appeal to an audience with difficulty sustaining attention. Oranges emphasize important findings by drawing the eye, while shades of blue or teal convey trust and calm. When visualizing data, creating outreach materials, and designing the official study website from the ground up, I implemented these design elements to successfully connect with my target audience. Effective science communication is a common theme throughout my learning and leadership competencies. Being able to tailor written, verbal, and visual communication to different audiences inspires my confidence in pursuing work as a physician-researcher, where information is constantly tailored for patients, study participants, or colleagues. My outreach materials and senior Departmental Honors deliverables emphasize my attention to detail and the theme of making knowledge or ideas accessible to any audience.