Jami C. Pittman

Jami C. Pittman

Jami C. is a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. candidate who is strongly committed to using scientific knowledge about social issues to spark societal change. Jami's training and career priorities are working in local communities and applying her research to better inform public policy, particularly sex education policy, in the United States. 

As banal as it may sound, Jami's desire for all people, including herself, is to reach our full potential. Thus, Jami's research, clinical, teaching, and community engagement interests and experience are all in service of addressing and removing societal, institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal barriers obstructing our path to health and life satisfaction. She is especially passionate about working with marginalized groups, who, through societal oppression and subjugation, often have more or unique barriers to overcome to reach our potential. 

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

• Jami is a developmentalist whose interests center on romantic and sexual development in early adolescence. She works in the lab of Dr. Valerie A Simon and is interested in using a holistic approach to examine predictors, outcomes, and trajectories of age-normative and age-precocious romantic and sexual engagement. She examines how peer and familial factors, psychosocial factors, socialization processes, and prior experiences, including trauma exposure and societal oppression, may contribute to how romantic and sexual adolescents become romantic and sexual adults. These research pursuits are ultimately in service of developing and implementing developmentally-appropriate, culturally-sound sexual health curricula and interventions.

• Before entering graduate school, Jami worked as a research assistant in the lab of Dr. Christine Sheffer within the Community Health and Social Medicine department of the CUNY School of Medicine at City College of New York. There, she worked collaboratively to address and reduce tobacco treatment disparities of majority low-income, Black and/or Latinx smokers and smokers with substance use disorders.

• Clinically, Jami provides individual and couple’s therapy at the Wayne State Psychology Clinic. In the past, she has worked with juvenile-justice involved youth and families at the Clinic for Child Study of the 3rd Circuit Judicial Court in Detroit, MI. Jami currently works within the General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (GPAM) division of The Children's Hospital of Michigan. There, she provides short-term, empirically-supported outpatient therapy to children and adolescents as part of an integrated behavioral health team. Within The Children's Hospital of Michigan Hamtramck School-Based Health Center, Jami also provides therapy to local high school students. 

Education

• BS, Psychology, Millsaps College, Jackson, MS
• MA, Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

Awards and grants

• 2019 Wayne State University Champion of Diversity and Inclusion - Student 

  2019 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Frances Degen Horowitz Millennium Scholar

Courses taught

UNDERGRADUATE

PSY 1010 (Intro to Psychology) Lab

PSY 2400 (Intro to Lifespan Development)