Viann Nguyen-Feng, assistant professor in the UMD's Department of Psychology, along with Mary Butler, associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, and colleagues, received a $385,000 funding award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review trauma-informed care practices in the healthcare field.
Butler and Nguyen-Feng are co-lead investigators on the project. Their review of trauma-informed care practices includes a systematic search of the literature, interviews with key informants, and gathering of public opinions.
Nguyen-Feng directs the Mind-Body Trauma Care Lab and serves as core faculty in the UMD clinical counseling master’s program. She also teaches the classes Multicultural Foundations, Personality and Diagnostic Assessment, and Advanced Statistics II.
In a 2020 interview, Nguyen-Feng said, “I hope to be part of the revolutionary discourse that is part of trauma psychology’s future. There are deeper policy and practice changes that can be made in the areas of mind-body interventions, emotional trauma, access to care, and more—and I seek to be a part of those conversations.” These words still seem to ring true in 2023.
Reflecting on this area of work and the need for the recent HHS funding, Nguyen-Feng says, “The interactions between our health and social conditions over the past three years have given us a different understanding of mind-body trauma care and point to the need to examine related practices. I’m honored and grateful to be involved in this discourse, and I look forward to what the next three years may bring.”
UMD’s Master of Arts in Psychological Science program