Erica Sood is a pediatric psychologist embedded within the cardiac center at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. Her overarching career goal is to improve the care and outcomes of critically ill infants and their families through the integration of neurodevelopmental and family-based psychosocial interventions into medical care. Dr. Sood is also co-chair of the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative, psychologist lead for the Family CaRes learning lab of the National Pediatric Cardiology Quality Improvement Collaborative (NPC-QIC), and secretary for the board of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. She directs the Nemours Cardiac Learning and Early Development (LEAD) Program and trains psychology trainees in the specialty area of cardiac neurodevelopment.
As part of the PEDSnet Scholars Program, Dr. Sood will design and test a prenatal, family-based psychosocial intervention for parents expecting a child with congenital heart disease that aims to prevent or reduce parent post-traumatic stress and improve child outcomes. This research will be conducted in partnership with parent and clinician stakeholders across PEDSnet institutions. The specific aims of the project are to:
- Validate intervention targets and define basic intervention elements through online crowdsourcing with patient stakeholders;
- Test intervention components and refine the intervention through feedback from parent and clinician stakeholders; and
- Determine whether the intervention can produce clinically significant improvements on predefined targets and outcomes.