Whitney Kingsbury obtained her doctorate from The University of Illinois, where she completed her dissertation entitled "Associations among adolescent obesity, bullying and media exposure in relation to psychological adjustment and body-size stigmatization."
In this research endeavor, she examined "fatism", bullying, and media exposure in middle school students to explore the associations among internalizing weight-based stigmatizing beliefs from the media, bullying overweight peers, and the impact these experiences have on psychological outcomes in overweight youth. Moreover, in this study she investigated possible ways of reducing weight-based stigmatization.
Her interests in this area stemmed from the unique opportunity she had as a behavioral therapist at an intensive summer weight loss adventure camp for adolescents in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In this position, she applied a biopsychosocial approach to the treatment of obesity that attended to both the physiology and psychology of such a condition through individual and group counseling, behavioral management, and nutritional education. She describes this experience as life-changing, to witness the growth and positive health changes these individuals made in their lives when armed with resources, knowledge, and support.
Whitney Kingsbury Cycling
As a clinician, she has worked in a college health center, hospitals, outpatient clinics, therapeutic day schools, and most recently, at a residential treatment program serving adolescents with significant trauma and abuse histories. She has also served as an administrator at a graduate school, managing their partnerships with community agencies, overseeing community engaged scholarship activities of students, and building programs through community outreach.
Whitney is therefore extremely excited to join the Team Domin8 Leadership Panel because she will have the opportunity to continue addressing the needs of our "at risk" youth community by empowering them and giving them the resources they need to lead a healthier lifestyle. A partnership with USANA Health Scienes will provide greatly needed nutritional and general health education to be delivered to our communities, and especially to our youth.
Below is an exerpt from Whitney's dissertation.
This excerpt sets the stage for the challenge facing the youth of America with regards to health and nutrtion. It provides clarity to the opportunity that exists for USANA Associates to have a positive impact on this world for generations to come.
The incidence of childhood obesity has tripled in the past three decades; current estimates are that approximately 11% of children between the ages of 6 and 17 years old are obese [Body Mass Index (BMI) > 95th percentile of reference population] and an additional 14% are overweight (BMI between the 85th and 95th percentiles; Troiano & Flegal, 1998). Also alarming, the prevalence of those overweight only continues to increase in similar magnitudes among all sex and age groups (Flegal & Troiano, 2000). Given the growing literature documenting the stigmatization of obesity in numerous domains including educational, medical, and occupational settings (Puhl & Brownell, 2003), more research is warranted to better understand how these prejudiced attitudes develop as well as the psychological consequences of stigmatization.
Perhaps most troubling, however, is that such negative attitudes toward the obese and overweight is evident in as young as pre-school children aged 3-5 years (Cramer & Steinwert, 1998). Despite prejudiced attitudes from other children and resulting peer rejection being one of the most common sources of stigmatization of obese children, few studies have assessed the bullying experiences of overweight youth. Moreover, the negative messages overweight children and adolescents receive from peers and even family members are compounded by the societal messages about obese individuals portrayed in the media.
KINGSBURY'S CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS:
Kingsbury, W. L., & Espelage, D. L. (2007). Attribution Style and Coping along the Bully-Victim Continuum. Special Issue: Experimental Educational Science, XLIV, 1, 71-102.
Kingsbury, W., & Espelage, D.L. (in press). Self-blaming attributions as mediators between victimization and psychological outcomes during early adolescence. European Journal of Educational Psychology.
Kingsbury, W. L., & Espelage, D. L. (2003, August). Attribution Style and Coping along the Bully-Victim Continuum. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APA, Toronto, Canada.
Kingsbury, W. L., & Espelage, D. L. (2004, April). Attribution Style and Coping along the Bully-Victim Continuum in Middle School Students. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.
Kingsbury, W. L., & Espelage, D. L. (2005, April). Using Cluster Analysis to Examine Coping Profiles across Bully-Victim Subtypes. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Atlanta, GA.
Kingsbury, W. L., Schiffner, T. A., Qin, X., Cheng, S. J. (2004, February). Development of the Racial Justice Action Scale. Poster presented at the Winter Roundtable Conference, New York, NY.
Holt, M., Kingsbury, W., Espelage, D., Keyes, M.A., & Koenig, B.W. (2003, March). Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Bullying. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
Machizawa, S., Trail, S., & Kingsbury, W. (2009, April). Teaching Civic Responsibility to Future Psychologists. Paper presented at the 2009 Southeastern Regional Counseling Psychology Conference, Counseling Psychology in the 21st Century: Social Justice, Practice, and Research, Athens, GA.
Swearer, S. M., Espelage, D. L., Love, K. B., & Kingsbury, W. (in press). School
-wide approaches to intervention with school violence and bullying. In B. J. Doll &
J.A. Cummings (Eds.), Population-based services of school psychologists. NY: The
Guilford Press.
Swearer, S., Peugh, J., Espelage, D. L., Siebecker, A. B., Kingsbury, W. K., & Bevins, K. S. (in press). A Social-Ecological Perspective on Bullying Prevention and Intervention. In S. Jimerson and M. Furlong (Eds.), Handbook of School Violence and School Safety: From Research to Practice. To be published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
