Allyson C. Bontempo, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

Postdoctoral Researcher
Rutgers University
[email protected]

Adjunct Professor
Department of Communication, Journalism, and Film
The College of New Jersey
[email protected]

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Welcome.

I am a postdoctoral researcher with the School of Social Work at Rutgers University and an adjunct professor within the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Media at The College of New Jersey. I completed a postdoctoral fellowship within the Department of Pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. I hold a Ph.D. and M.A. from Rutgers University in Health Communication, a BS in Psychology and English/Writing from Sacred Heart University, and I completed 40 Ph.D. credits in Clinical Psychology at Nova Southeastern University prior to entering the field of health communication. I consider myself interdisciplinary and believe in taking a holistic, biopsychosocial approach to understanding health communication-related phenomena.

​My research focuses on improving patient experience. My work targets three areas crucial to patient experience: diagnostic error, the patient-clinician relationship, and patient support networks including online communities. My work seeks to better understand how patient relationships with clinicians work in concert with patients' broader support networks outside of the healthcare system to shape the patient experience, particularly around issues of diagnosis.

Please feel free to connect with me if you are a student (undergraduate, masters, PhD), postdoc/fellow, junior or senior researcher, clinician, patient, or patient advocate. You can email me at [email protected] or [email protected].

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In the spotlight!

Hear me discuss my take on invalidation in healthcare on The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast.

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