Throughout the month of June, we celebrate Pride Month and recognize the impact that LGBTQ+ individuals have brought to our communities and country as a whole. We also highlight the work that our students, faculty and alumni are doing to support and uplift the LGBTQ+ community. Our Access Spotlight for June is Dr. Danielle ‘Dani’ Chiaramonte, a Community Psychologist and Associate Research Scientist at Yale School of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dani earned both her master’s and doctorate degrees in Ecological-Community Psychology at Michigan State University.
Dani is a part of the Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative. She and her team conduct research in collaboration with local LGBTQ organizations to promote health equity and meet the needs of sexual and gender minorities, particularly in the areas of LGBTQ mental health, sexual health, and gender-based violence. Dani’s current work focuses on implementing sustainable LGBTQ-affirming mental health interventions in community settings.
Dani earned her undergraduate degree from DePaul University, where she was first exposed to community-engaged research. A teaching assistant in one of her very first psychology courses introduced her to Leonard Jason, Director of the Center for Community Research at DePaul, who connected her with the Center and ignited her interest in community psychology.
At DePaul’s Center for Community Research, Dani was particularly drawn to the fact that most of their research was taking place in neighborhoods throughout Chicago, through conversations with community members. She felt like this approach to research was the best avenue for her research to make a direct impact out in the real world.
“The research was all on programs that mattered to the Chicago community,” she explained. “These needs were coming from the community and the researchers were giving it right back, and working on things that would have more sustainable, long-term impact.”
Dani discovered Michigan State during the PhD application process, finding during her search that several faculty members had research interests that aligned with her own. “The biggest issue for me with a lot of other types of research, was that the person who was benefiting the most from it was often the primary investigator or the researchers themselves, to get further ahead in their career,” she said. While she appreciates the importance of this type of scientific research, she knew that her desire was to work directly with a particular community to identify their needs and discover long-term, structural solutions.
While at Michigan State, Dani worked primarily with MSU psychologist Dr. Robin Miller. They partnered with the Connect Project to conduct structural change research focused HIV prevention and care engagement among youth. With fellow Psychology professor Dr. Cris Sullivan, Dani spent time working with the Washington-based Domestic Violence Housing First Coalition, studying the impact of providing housing to those affected by domestic violence through this intervention.
“It was such a positive experience for me in terms of the community I built, connections that I made and the training that I got,” she said. “I’m constantly drawing on my community psychology and implementation science training that I got from faculty.”
It was also the first time that Dani encountered a great number of queer students and faculty, which coincided with her coming out about her sexual identity. Seeing so many of her peers and staff members living their lives openly was a transformative experience. “Most of my queer mentors who really helped me find that in myself were at Michigan State and in Lansing, and I’m very grateful for that,” she said.
Dani arrived at Yale in 2022, entering a postdoctoral program with the Family Violence Research Lab. Her ultimate goal, however, was to live and work in New York City, where she knew there would be a wealth of diverse communities to draw upon for LGBTQ-centered research. She was connected with the Yale LGBTQ Affinity Group, an organization supporting queer employees at Yale, which helped to expand her community at a new school in a new state and to meet other faculty doing queer research.
One such faculty member was Dr. John Pachankis, who ran the Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative through the Yale School of Public Health, with offices in New Haven and Manhattan. After a number of conversations, Dani was hired as Associate Research Scientist at the Initiative, assisting Pachankis in a number of projects surrounding LGBTQ mental health, including the supervision of a team of research assistants and graduate students. Their primary focus is the studying the efficacy and effectiveness of LGBTQ-affirmative mental health interventions.
“We really don’t know or have a lot of evidence-based psychotherapy interventions specifically for queer people, so we’ve been testing those, and the cool part that I am working on now is actually implementing those interventions into community settings,” she explained.
Their team recently trained over 700 mental health providers across the country in LGBTQ-affirmative CBT and is studying how to efficiently and effectively improve mental health for LGBTQ young people who access care at their local LGBTQ community centers. “From there, we can really think about how we can institutionalize evidence-based treatments for LGBT people that we are working into the places queer people trust the most to receive therapy, which are these LGBT centers,” she explained.
Being a member of the same community that one is researching in can be both challenging and beneficial, Dani explains. With the historical mistrust surrounding mental health and psychotherapy among the LGBTQ community stemming from conversion therapy and other negative psychological interventions, it can be helpful for modern research to be led by familiar faces.
“This is a treatment by us, for us, which means a lot when we’re talking to our clients, when we’re training providers, we get it both personally and scientifically,” Dani said. “We’re really following the evidence, building community partnerships, connecting with participants, and it benefits us in terms of practically knowing how to read our community, because it IS our community.”
Dani stressed the importance of this research in a critical time in history for the greater LGBTQ community. In the past, any research surrounding queer individuals was usually an afterthought or grouped in with research focused on gender-based violence, substance abuse, HIV, or homelessness. But with programs like the Yale LGBT Mental Health Initiative growing across the country, we can shine a light on the more specific needs of this group.
“Queer people statistically have some of the highest disparities in mental health, so it’s an important population to continue researching. We have to pay attention to the subgroups within the larger queer population and keep fighting the fight.
June is a busy month for Dani and her team at the Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative, as she and her colleagues do their share of not just celebrating at Pride events, but also attending to spread the word about their organization and the impactful work they are doing.
“I’m so lucky to be in a space where most of my colleagues are queer, and if not, they’re the greatest allies of all time, and that is so lucky, because I don’t have to only rely on something like Pride Month to feel seen; we’re seen by each other every day.”
Honorees’ views are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the College of Social Science.