Tamara J Sussman

Dr. Tamara Sussman is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Medical Center and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her research aims to elucidate how exposure to childhood adversities, including exposure to structural racism, leads to changes in cognitive processes via altered neurodevelopment, and how these changes lead to increased risk for negative life outcomes such as substance use. The ultimate goal of my research program is elucidating mechanisms of risk to aid in the development of novel approaches to prevention, e.g. structural interventions, the primary line of prevention for structural inequities, as well as family- and individual level-prevention, e.g. cognitive therapies for components of decision making impacted by childhood exposures.