Research Focus

Dr. Phillips is a clinical psychologist with a background in health psychology. Her research program focuses on understanding contextual, behavioral, and micro-temporal processes associated with substance use and related health outcomes, as well as developing and evaluating scalable technology-based interventions to reduce substance use and other modifiable behaviors that contribute to cancer-related and chronic disease risk. She uses ecological momentary assessment (EMA), smartphone-based just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs), electronic health record data, wearable biosensors, and artificial intelligence methods to understand and intervene on real-time processes that influence tobacco/nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, and polysubstance use. A major emphasis of her program of research is translating real-world behavioral data into adaptive mobile interventions that deliver support at moments of heightened risk. This work has implications for cancer prevention, survivorship, and medically vulnerable populations by informing low-burden, personalized tools for substance use reduction, stress management, symptom monitoring, treatment adherence, and quality of life. Her ongoing and planned work extends EMA and JITAI methods to populations affected by cancer and other chronic health conditions, with the goal of improving health equity and expanding access to personalized interventions, particularly among local populations in Hawaiʻi.

Her current studies examine emerging patterns of e-cigarette and nicotine product, cannabis, alcohol, and other substance use among young adults and vulnerable populations, with attention to behavioral mechanisms that can be targeted in prevention and intervention.