News

We are pleased to announce that Heather Joseph, DO, has been promoted to Associate Professor of Psychiatry by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Dr. Joseph earned her DO from Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and she came to Pittsburgh to complete residency training in Psychiatry at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital. She next undertook a clinical fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry, followed by postdoctoral research training in the Department’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded T32 training program in child and adolescent mental health research. She was recruited to the Department of Psychiatry faculty at the rank of assistant professor in 2019 and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Pediatrics.

Dr. Joseph’s research focuses on the identification of early cognitive, behavioral, and neural indicators of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) risk in infancy and early childhood. She investigates the various ways that cognition and behavior evolve in children at risk for ADHD before they enter grade school, when ADHD is usually first diagnosed, and the ways that parent behavior may be shaping it. She leads an NIMH study that employs non-invasive, wearable, brain imaging to examine the relationship between parent-child brain and behavior synchrony and ADHD symptoms from preschool to school age. She is additionally principal investigator of an NIMH-funded pilot effectiveness trial of a parent behavioral intervention to target sleep disrupting behaviors for young children at high risk for ADHD, and serves as co-investigator on multiple additional grants. 

Dr. Joseph has published original, peer-reviewed papers in top journals in her field and has been invited to present her research on numerous occasions nationally and internationally. She has received honors including a Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry Top Cited Article of 2023 honor and a Children’s Trust Young Investigator Award. She has held numerous grant review roles with the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and provided reviews for more than a dozen journals. In addition, Dr. Joesph is a co-founder of the Department’s Maternal Perinatal and Infant Research Collaborative (M-PIRE), which she co-established to unite researchers and clinicians working with families in the perinatal and postpartum periods in the Department of Psychiatry and across the University.

An outstanding and highly regarded clinician, Dr. Joseph is an attending physician with the Consultation-Liaison Service, and also with the Telephonic Consultation Program (TiPS), which enables primary care physicians and other providers to access immediate consultative advice for pediatric patients with behavioral health concerns. She also pioneered work at UPMC Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital on the recognition and management of delirium in infants and young children. 

Dr. Joseph is a skilled teacher and mentor, and has worked extensively with residents, fellows, and psychology interns, and serves as an instructor and member of the training committee for the Department’s NIMH T32 training program on child and adolescent psychiatry research.

“Dr. Joseph is an outstanding clinician and investigator who has demonstrated expertise in an area of pediatric ADHD—identifying early signs of future disorder at young ages before diagnosis typically occurs—that was previously understudied. She deftly integrates her innovative research and superb clinical work, is a highly effective teacher and mentor, and contributes much in terms of service locally, nationally, and internationally,” said David Lewis, MD (Chair, Department of Psychiatry).

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Joseph!