Dr. Deborah Wiebe

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Deb received her PhD in Medical Psychology, as well as a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1988. She then joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah, where she helped to develop a Health Psychology training program, and served as Graduate Director as well as Director of Clinical Training.  In 2006, she joined the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, with a secondary appointment in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).  While there, Dr. Wiebe served as Director of Research at UT Southwestern and on the executive board for the UTD Center for Children and Families.  In 2013, she joined the faculty in Psychological Sciences at UC Merced, where she is a member of the Health Psychology area and serves as Director of the UC Merced Health Sciences Research Institute. Dr. Wiebe’s research focuses on the social and developmental context of self-regulation and coping with chronic illness.  Much of her work has focused on understanding how children, families and physicians work together to manage type 1 diabetes across adolescence and into emerging adulthood. Most recently, she has examined how sociocultural factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, cultural beliefs, race/ethnicity) affect how young people and their families manage diabetes. Dr. Wiebe’s research has been funded primarily by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).