Smolderen will assume the role at APA’s annual meeting in August. The Health Advocacy & Policy Council identifies and shapes APA health advocacy priorities. In her new role, Smolderen will assemble a group to work with the APA to prioritize health advocacy priorities, work with the national APA Advocacy Coordinating Committee, and bring together subject-matter experts to support advocacy/policy priorities. She will work with APA Council Representatives and relevant caucuses to advance health-related business items, and will work with members of Division 38 to report on the impact of engagement. Furthermore, she will participate in Practice Leadership training and facilitate advocacy/policy capacity amongst trainees.
The goal of the Health Advocacy & Policy is to broaden the impact of behavioral sciences and evidence-based behavioral interventions related to health psychology, advocacy, and national policy. Smolderen has been a member of the APA since 2019.
She has a long-standing track record of advocacy before that within the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA). She is a fellow of the ACC and the AHA. She serves as the co-chair for the American Heart Association’s Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) national action plan geared towards activating health care systems. She is a member of the American College of Cardiology’s Peripheral Vascular Disease Leadership Council, the AHA’s PVD council and Assistant Editor to ACC CardioSmart, a national platform to promote shared decision making in vascular populations, and serves on editorial boards of Vascular Medicine, Health Psychology, and Psychosomatic Medicine.
Smolderen has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including a roadmap for the field of health psychology to sustainably extend existing holistic, integrated approaches in cardiovascular care. Her research focuses on a multidisciplinary, patient-centered model to help improve the outcomes of patients with PAD and cardiovascular disease more broadly, through the delivery of integrated care models, including behavioral health care.