Melissa C. Kuhajda, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine
The University of Alabama School of Medicine, Tuscaloosa Campus

(University Medical Center, Tuscaloosa)
Phone: (205) 348-1339
E-mail: mkuhajda@cchs.ua.edu

Dr. Kuhajda achieved her undergraduate degree from Illinois State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in special education—deaf and hard-of-hearing. For ten years she taught hearing impaired children in public and private schools in Illinois and Alabama. While teaching school she earned a master’s degree in religious studies from Loyola University, Chicago.

As a graduate student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at Alabama, Dr. Kuhajda published both her thesis and dissertation projects on chronic pain in top-rate peer reviewed journals. She has the unprecedented honor of receiving the highly competitive Henry C. Rickard Clinical Service Award the same year she was presented with the competitive Most Outstanding Dissertation Award within the psychology department. While on internship at The Memphis Veterans Administration Hospital, Dr. Kuhajda received extensive instruction and mentored experience on the interface of primary care and clinical psychology. Following internship, she completed a Post-doctoral fellowship in the Behavioral Medicine Unit, Division of Preventive Medicine at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She served as a psychotherapist for the multi-site research study Enhancing Recovery in patients with Coronary Heart Disease (ENRICHD), receiving specialized training and supervision in Cognitive Therapy from the Beck Institute. At the end of her post-doc year Dr. Kuhajda was hired as the staff psychologist and special projects manager for several rural community-based clinical research projects ongoing at UAB.

Dr. Kuhajda began her career at The University of Alabama School of Medicine, Tuscaloosa Campus, in 2001, serving as Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and Community and Rural Medicine and as Assistant Director for Research in the Institute for Rural Health Research. During this busy time of teaching medical students and residents, providing psychotherapy to patients in The Betty Shirley Clinic, and working on several research grants, she had the prestigious honor of being named an NIH Health Disparities Scholar and achieving the 2007 Theodore H. Blau Early Career Award for Outstanding Contribution to Professional Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 12.

Dr. Kuhajda joined the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine fulltime in 2007. Her research interests include prevention and treatment in rural underserved areas on the topics of chronic pain management in adults and aggressive and antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. Additionally, Dr. Kuhajda is committed to teaching medical students and residents invested in rural practice the importance of serving the mental health needs of their patients.