Kelly S. DeMartini, PhD

Kelly S. DeMartini, PhD, is a licensed clinical health psychologist whose work focuses on addiction and behavioral medicine, as well as digestive diseases. As a clinician, she works with individuals who have been diagnosed with both compensated and decompensated liver disease, including those who also experience alcohol use disorders. The goal of her clinical work is to help her patients understand their specific relationships between physical and mental health and develop approaches that promote healthier behaviors.

“My favorite part of working with patients with liver disease is helping them to utilize their own strengths and build new strategies to better manage their illness and its complications,” DeMartini says. “I like being part of their medical team that is safe from judgement and can, instead, enhance their care.” Providing team-based, personalized care for patients who often experience significant social stigma around their disease and building relationships that bolster motivation to increase health-enhancing behaviors is one of the key factors that drew her to the care of patients with liver disease.

As a research scientist at Yale School of Medicine, DeMartini studies the development and utilization of technology-based substance use and lifestyle health interventions. A key goal of her work is to utilize wearable and smartphone technologies for clinical digital phenotyping. This objective, data-driven measurement of individual health and functioning via personal biosensors can help build understanding of the connections among substance use and other health behaviors, including sleep, cardiac and respiratory functioning, and physical activity. By translating these insights into technology-based health interventions, she aims to increase access to holistic, effective care that integrates personalized biological data for individuals with alcohol use disorders.

DeMartini completed her doctoral training at Syracuse University and pursued predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships at Yale School of Medicine. She serves on the national Alcoholic Hepatitis Network project, contributing to the development of clinical trial guidelines for patients with co-occurring alcohol use disorders and alcoholic liver disease.