Dr. Hood directs NIH- and foundation-funded clinical research aimed at promoting health and quality of life outcomes for people with diabetes. He has expertise and experience with diabetes epidemiology and interventions, study design, methodology, data management, and advanced statistical methods. There are two content threads to his work: 1) construct prevention and treatment programs to address modifiable psychological and family factors that create barriers to optimal diabetes management, and 2) optimize the use of devices and technologies to improve health outcomes. With regard to the first thread, Dr. Hood has successfully implemented depression screening programs in tertiary diabetes and GI clinics within a Quality Improvement framework, and recently completed a large scale clinical trial on a distress prevention program for teens with type 1 diabetes. Dr. Hood manages and analyzes all the data from these studies. From a device and technology standpoint, Dr. Hood coordinates the Human Factors assessments in Drs. Maahs’ and Buckingham’s closed loop studies and is recognized as one of the experts in this area nationally and internationally. In addition, he has implemented Human Factors assessments in national (e.g., T1D Exchange) studies and registries and is the lead psychologist on 2 of the 4 UC4 grants from NIDDK (Hovorka, PI; Bergenstal, PI). These assessments focus on uptake of devices and technologies, and determining strategies to promote uptake and optimize their use. Dr. Hood and his research team have published over 100 scientific articles on these topics and are active presenters at diabetes, behavioral medicine, and advocacy conferences.

Dr. Hood also works in clinical and service settings. Dr. Hood is a licensed clinical psychologist and is part of the diabetes care team at Stanford. He is the past chair of the American Diabetes Association’s Behavioral Medicine and Psychology Interest Group and is currently a member of the Research Policy Committee. He was also a member of the ADA’s Call to Congress in March 2017. Dr. Hood is an Associate Editor for both Diabetes Care and Pediatric Diabetes.