Heather Halford, MA, is a clinical psychology PhD student and has been a staff member at UCSD CHEAR since 2019. Heather has over a decade of experience in the treatment of children, adolescents, and adults with eating disorders, emotional eating, and obesity and initially trained at the UCSD Health Eating Disorders Center for Treatment and Research. Heather completed her predoctoral internship at the Emory School of Medicine/Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta/Marcus Autism Center where her clinical work focused on increasing effective parenting strategies to manage challenging behavior in children with autism, feeding challenges in children with complex medical and neurodevelopmental conditions, and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) for preschool and school-aged children. Heather’s research interests are in better understanding the maintaining mechanisms of food avoidance in Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. At CHEAR, Heather works as a study interventionist on research studies and as a primary therapist in the Intensive Outpatient (IOP) Programs.
