Center for Digital Health

Deanna Kaplan, PhD is an Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Brown University in the School of Public Health. A clinical psychologist and research methodologist, Dr. Kaplan's work focuses on the development of methods for measuring health-relevant processes outside of the lab, in the natural habitats of daily life. Her research integrates a variety of ambulatory assessment methods, including ecological momentary assessment, accelerometry, GPS trajectories, ambulatory cardiovascular monitoring, voice diaries, and the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). She leads a program of research focused on the optimization of ambulatory assessment methods for clinical science and behavioral medicine. She also frequently collaborates as a research methodologist on projects that use ambulatory assessment to advance treatment research for populations with co-occurring psychological and physical health concerns.

Dr. Kaplan is a developer of the EAR, a research method for naturalistically assessing social interactions and language use in daily life. In partnership with Emory Spiritual Health, several current projects apply this method to investigating social-ecological mechanisms of spiritually-integrated and contemplative interventions. Other current interests include implementation concerns in digital health, including identifying adverse implementation outcomes of digital assessment and intervention technologies.

Dr. Kaplan received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona, completed her predoctoral residency in Behavioral Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and completed an NHLBI-funded F32 postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. Prior to this, she worked as research specialist in public health policy evaluation, conducting community health needs assessments in the southwestern United States. She is a past recipient of a National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health and a PEO Scholar Award for Dissertation Research from the PEO Foundation.