Omni Cassidy, M.S.

Omni Cassidy, M.S. is a 2012 Cohort year graduate student in the Medical and Clinical Psychology dual-track program. In 2010, she received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. As an undergraduate, Omni volunteered with the weight Management and Eating Disorders Program. She also worked as an intern at the Jackson Heart Study in Jackson, MS, investigating African Americans with Type II diabetes. Before beginning her graduate studies, Omni worked as a research assistant at the NIH and USUHS on a study examining the effect of interpersonal psychotherapy on the prevention of excess weight gain in adolescent girls and also coordinated a pilot study to adapt interpersonal psychotherapy to be culturally appropriate in preventing excess weight gain in racial/ethnic minority groups. She is interested in factors that may promote disordered eating and excessive weight gain in African American youth and how such research may be used to inform policy. For her dissertation, Omni plans to examine the effect of food marketing and attentional biases on eating behaviors in African American adolescent girls.