About Dr. Dvorsky

Melissa Dvorsky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Children's National Hospital and the George Washington University School of
Medicine and Health Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from Virginia Commonwealth University, completed a clinical internship at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, and completed an NIMH-funded T32 fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Dvorsky is the director of research for the ADHD and Learning Differences Program at Children's National Hospital. Dr. Dvorsky’s research is focused on improving the academic, social, and behavioral functioning of adolescents and emerging adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and their families. Her work aspires to improve access to, and the effectiveness and sustainability of treatments for ADHD by (a) identifying and targeting treatment mechanisms including risk and resilience processes, and (b) leveraging technology to enhance, personalize, disseminate, and generalize treatments. She recently completed a three-wave longitudinal study of adolescents and emerging adults spanning the transition from high school to the first year of college to understand mechanisms that buffer against the risk of ADHD in predicting academic functioning and alcohol/substance misuse. Her work has also examined treatment processes including skill acquisition, cognitive factors (e.g., motivation, self-efficacy, executive functioning, engagement), social support, and parent involvement that optimize sustained improvements in functioning across settings. She is actively working to translate this knowledge into novel intervention and service delivery strategies. Dr. Dvorsky was recently awarded an NIMH-funded K23 to develop and pilot a technology-enhanced behavioral skills intervention called ATOM (Advanced Tools for Organization Management) for middle school students with ADHD. ATOM aims to increase treatment engagement, skill utilization, and generalized improvements by delivering in-the-moment interventions and empirically personalizing treatment.

Dr. Dvorsky also serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Youth & Adolescence and the School Mental Health journal and is active in the training and mentoring of students, interns, and fellows. Dr. Dvorsky regularly engages with school and community partners through educational programming and training, advocacy, and research.