Shawn Van, MPH

Shawn Van is a postgraduate associate at XRPeds Lab. He is passionate about brief interventions to improve youth mental health through immersive and other novel technologies, with a broader interest in the impact of technology (e.g., AI, social media) on youth well-being. He is also interested in scalable interventions (e.g., peer support) and implementation science to improve health outcomes in low-resource and community settings.

His current projects at XRPeds Lab include: (1) a mixed-methods pilot evaluation of an online peer-support training among college students, (2) a VR-based assessment of nicotine vaping behaviors and risks among young adults using multimodal physiological and psychological data (e.g., eye gaze, heart rate), and (3) a statewide evaluation of the impact of cellphone restriction policies on students’ well-being in Connecticut high schools.

Shawn earned his Master of Public Health from Yale University, where he supported a large-scale implementation of LGBTQ-affirmative mental health therapy in low-resource community settings. His prior experiences also include leading the development of self-guided digital health interventions (e.g., vital signs tracking) for chronic patients in Singapore and developing market assessment frameworks to improve sanitation access in rural communities in Kenya. Outside of research, Shawn loves aerial dancing, swimming, bouldering, and meditation.