Elisabeth Ponce-Garcia, PhD

Elisabeth Ponce-Garcia, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist and her research focus is the life-span science of resilience. Dr. Ponce-Garcia has worked to train behavioral health professionals in developing personal resilience and in using resilience building strategies within their practice. Specifically, Dr. Ponce-Garcia has worked with the Department of Defense and the Army Substance Abuse Program (ASAP) to provide continuing education for behavior health clinicians, provided training for the Comanche Nation, Choctaw Nation, and the Sothern Plains Tribal Health Board, and worked with prevention agencies and community coalitions to build resilient communities and develop resilience within prevention specialists. Dr. Ponce-Garcia has taught courses in resilience, multi-cultural psychology, development, research methods, and learning at the graduate level in clinical programs to include school psychology, professional counseling, and marriage and family therapy programs.

She developed the Scale of Protective Factors (SPF) with a hierarchic structure measuring two cognitive/individual and two social/interpersonal factors of adult resilience. The SPF is included within the repository of resilience measures for public health professions by the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The scale has been replicated in multiple populations and is used in more than 13 countries. The psychometric properties of the SPF have been shown in multiple studies to outperform the historically used measures of adult resilience.

Within academic settings, the SPF is used to help identify strengths and deficits known to determine resilience. Strategies for supporting strengths and ameliorating areas of deficit have been shown to improve overall resilience and adaptation to chronic and acute stress.