Dr. Karen Ingersoll is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. She is a BoardCertified Clinical Psychologist. As a clinician, she provides patient care weekly at UVA’s Ryan White clinic. Her clinical skills include Motivational Interviewing (MI), and with colleagues, she has adapted MI for group therapy and couples. Her clinical and research efforts focus on motivating people to change health behaviors to live better despite experiencing stigmatized health problems such as HIV and unhealthy alcohol use.
With CBHT colleagues, she created and tested theory-based digital psychological interventions such as CARRII, an eHealth intervention to reduce alcohol-exposed pregnancy based on the seminal CHOICES counseling intervention on which she was an investigator. Currently, she and colleagues are updating CARRII and tailoring it for indigenous women. Other recent digital interventions included Pos4Health, an eHealth intervention for the 6 top problems for people living with HIV, and bhoos, a mobile app focused on safety for college alcohol drinkers.
She leads the PositiveLinks team, which created an award-winning efficacious mHealth platform for retention in HIV care that has been disseminated widely. While PositiveLinks has entered usual care in Virginia, it is being investigated further in large studies of adults with HIV in Washington D.C. and Florida, and with youth in San Antonio.
Her international research has included studying methods to train nurses and community health workers in MI and assessing the frequency, correlates, and impact of alcohol-related sexual risks in Limpopo, South Africa.
Dr. Ingersoll is a first generation college student, and earned her B.A. in Psychology from Louisiana State University, making her a lifelong LSU Tigers fan. Her Czech immigrant grandfather asked why she had to go to college AGAIN as she completed her Masters in Clinical and Counseling Psychology at Southern Methodist University, and her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia’s former Institute of Clinical Psychology. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship focusing on Addiction Medicine and Health Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was a faculty member in the Departments of Psychiatry and Internal Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1993-2005 before joining the University of Virginia School of Medicine in October 2005. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and 3 books.
Dr. Ingersoll grew up in New Orleans, and enjoys diverse foods and live music of all genres. She has two sons and two stepdaughters. She typically visits the Outer Banks in the summer and skis in Colorado in the winter, and loves exploring new destinations.