Dana Bakula, PhD
Child Psychologist; Program and Research Director; Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine
Full Biography
As Children’s Mercy Research Institute (CMRI) grows its research programs, the institute has welcomed many innovative, early-career investigators to its roster of researchers. These investigators bring their novel ideas, unique talents, and diverse interests to CMRI. The following profile is one in our series on emerging principal investigators.
Dana Bakula, PhD, Gastroenterology, is the Program & Research Director for the Interdisciplinary Feeding and Swallowing Program and an assistant professor at University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Medicine. From an early age, she knew she wanted to be a child psychologist. “I have no idea how I decided this so early in life, but I've always wanted to work with kids,” said Dr. Bakula. “I've always liked talking to people, and I knew I wanted to be a psychologist. It wasn't until late college that I realized I also wanted to do research.”
When she first began graduate school in psychology at Oklahoma State University, she planned to someday work one-on-one with children with medical conditions. During her research and clinical training, her career goals evolved when she observed how much stress parents experienced because of their children’s medical conditions. While studying for her PhD, she conducted two meta-analyses studies and found a link between parent mental health and a child’s wellbeing. “When parents aren't feeling supported, it has downstream effects on child health and wellbeing,” said Dr. Bakula. “That got me interested in understanding what interventions we can do at this two-generation level to improve both parent and child outcomes.”
In 2020, Dr. Bakula began her fellowship in pediatric psychology at Children’s Mercy Kansas City (CMKC), and she joined the faculty in 2022. Much of her research focuses on improving the wellbeing of children with pediatric feeding disorder (PFD) and their families. PFD is common, affecting one in 37 children. Children with PFD have so much difficulty eating that it affects their growth and nutrition. Without effective treatment, it can lead to severe malnutrition.
Caring for a child with this disorder is very stressful, and 40% of parents of children with PFD report mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, and parenting stress. “It is one of the most stressful conditions that parents face,” said Dr. Bakula. “It’s so prevalent among young children, and there's such a need to support these parents.” Parent mental health issues are known to impact PFD treatment, including mealtime interactions. Yet, addressing parent mental health in PFD care is not part of the standard of care, and no mental health treatments for these parents have been tested. Dr. Bakula is one the first researchers to address this problem.
In May 2023, she received a National Institutes of Health K23 award to study a brief mental health treatment for parents of children with PFD. The intervention uses focused acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a type of therapy that can be helpful in just two sessions. Her team will measure whether the treatment results in positive effects on parent mental health and parent-child interactions at mealtimes. The study’s mental health treatment is designed to be easily scalable so that it can be shared and implemented at children’s hospitals around the country. Because of this, it has the potential to reach parents of children with PFD throughout the United States. This project builds on her earlier study to develop and pilot test the mental health intervention.
Along with her research into parent mental health, Dr. Bakula also focuses on other projects to improve the quality of life of children with pediatric feeding disorder. She is a co-investigator on a project with Lori Erickson, PhD, RN, MSN, CPNP-PC, Remote Health Solutions, and Sarah Edwards, DO, Gastroenterology, to implement CHAMP® App, a mobile health software platform to help patients with feeding tubes transition from tube to oral feeding in the home.
Dr. Bakula has also worked with community advisors in her research projects at CMKC. She would like to continue working with community members on future research projects, including in a qualitative investigation that looks at gaps in support systems for parents of children with medical conditions. She is planning the project with community member Nicole Crump who is the parent of a child with a rare genetic disorder. Crump would serve as a co-investigator on the project. “Nicole is very active in community advocacy and has a great sense of what’s going on in the community of parents of children with feeding issues,” Dr. Bakula said. “It’s nice to partner directly with her. When we partner with the community, the research we do is so much stronger and better informed.”
Dr. Bakula is mentored by Ann Davis, PhD, MPH, Director, Center for Children’s Healthy Lifestyles and Nutrition; Delwyn Catley, PhD, San Diego State University; and Kandace Fleming, PhD, University of Kansas.