Cristina Pozo-Kaderman

Cristina Pozo-Kaderman, Ph.D. is the Director of Clinical Operations for Cancer Support Services at Sylvester Cancer Center and Voluntary Faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami for the past 3 years. She obtained her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Miami. She completed her internship at Cornell Medical College, Payne Whitney Clinic and her fellowship in psycho-oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She was at the Mount Sinai Cancer Center on Miami Beach for 22 years. She is a clinical psychologist & certified in sex therapist for oncology patients.

During graduate school she was awarded the Patricia Roberts Harris fellowship for minorities and women which provided support for her doctoral training and allowed her to develop her own research study for her Master’s and doctoral dissertation. She designed a longitudinal study following women from diagnosis to one year post treatment and women were assessed at 5 time periods with a combination of interview and standardized measures looking at coping strategies, social support, and marital satisfaction. This research study served a pilot project for grant application and award from ACS to look at how minority women adjust to a breast cancer diagnosis.

Dr. Pozo-Kaderman’s dream came true when she was accepted to MSKCC fellowship in psycho-oncology and she had the opportunity to work with Jimmie Holland, Paul Jacobsen, Steve Passik, Bill Redd, Lynna Lesko, and Bill Breitbart.

After returning from MSKCC, Dr. Pozo-Kaderman spent a year at the Sylvester Cancer Center as faculty in Psychiatry and helped establish the first psycho-oncology program at Sylvester. She was then offered the opportunity to create and develop the psychosocial program for south Florida for Salick Healthcare, which strongly supported psychosocial services (social work, psychological, psychiatric, nutritional, and palliative) being offered to all cancer patients and families. Her career at this point shifted and became more clinical care and administrative, but she continued to supervise clinically for a year-long practicum doctoral students from the University of Miami clinical health program, lecture on psychosocial oncology, and serve on dissertation committees. She has been actively involved in the community making presentations on psychosocial oncology issues, actively involved in Komen Kids, was on the founding board for the Cancer Support Community in Miami, and serve(s) as a local resource while keeping a busy clinical psycho-oncology practice and seeing oncology sex therapy cases. Most recently Dr. Pozo-Kaderman has been back at the University of Miami, Sylvester Cancer Center where she has administratively worked to develop and grow across the main campus and 7 satellites Cancer Support Services where patients receive free of charge music and art therapy, massage, exercise physiology, yoga, pet therapy, chaplaincy and spiritual counseling, patient resource centers, and volunteers. In addition she oversees services requiring insurance such psychology, psychiatry, and acupuncture, while continuing to clinically see patients and supervise psychology doctoral students. She has now developed a year-long program for nurses to help cope with compassion fatigue. She continues to be actively involved in community programs.