Frances Wymbs

Dr. Wymbs is an Assistant Professor of Primary Care in the Department of Family Medicine in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University. Her research interests are treatments for youth with externalizing and internalizing problems and their families. She has specific interests in the delivery of evidence-based interventions, especially parent interventions, in primary care, school and community settings for children with disruptive behavior problems, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She is also interested in understanding ways to improve the patient-provider relationship and engage patients and families in evidence-based treatments delivered in primary care.

She has additional interests in enhancing the engagement of families in evidence-based treatments for children with ADHD and related problems, and has recently used models from health economics and marketing research to study parents’ and other consumers’ preferences for different evidence-based treatment programs. Dr. Wymbs has a specific interest in studying and working with families who are traditionally "hard-to-reach," including those facing a variety of psychosocial and environmental stressors (e.g., financial stress, single-parent status, limited access to mental health care). 

Dr. Wymbs’ clinic interests are in children, adolescents and families with severe behavioral and emotional problems, such as comorbid ADHD, eating disorders and parental depression. Dr. Wymbs has participated in federally funded research for the past 15 years, has been the recipient of grant funding from private agencies, and has published in peer-reviewed journals. She is a clinical psychologist and works with graduate and medical students interested in clinical child and pediatric psychology.