Rebecca Utz

About

Rebecca Utz is a professor involved in the Behavioral Medicine Research Group at the University of Utah's Department of Psychology. Her work is part of a dynamic interdisciplinary group that includes core Health Psychology faculty, affiliated faculty from the U of U Medical Center, and health-focused graduate students across the department. The group provides opportunities for research feedback, professional development, and collaboration, with activities such as research presentations, outside speakers, grant development brainstorming, journal clubs, and professional panels. Her contributions include engaging in research that explores health equity, social support in underrepresented communities, and health outcomes, as evidenced by her involvement in practice dissertation defenses and collaborative projects. The group’s activities aim to sharpen thinking, generate new ideas, and support the professional growth of students and early career faculty, ultimately fostering successful careers in behavioral medicine.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Sociology
• Developmental psychology
• Psychiatry
• Gerontology
• Medicine
• Clinical psychology
• Gender studies
• Psychotherapist

Selected publications

• Families in Later Life: A Decade in Review

  Journal of Marriage and Family · 2020 · 239 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Later-life families encompass the legal, biological, romantic, and kin-like relationships of persons ages 65 and older. Research on older families has flourished over the past decade, as population aging has intensified concerns regarding the capacities of families to care for older adults and the adequacy of public pension systems to provide an acceptable standard of living. Shifting patterns of family formation over the past half-century have created a context in which contemporary older adult…

  DOI

• Health profiles of spouse caregivers: The role of active coping and the risk for developing prolonged grief symptoms

  Social Science & Medicine · 2020 · 21 citations

  DOI

• Using community engagement with FRAME: Framework for reporting adaptations and modifications to evidence-based interventions

  Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications · 2024-11-26 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Community engagement is increasingly considered a key component of intervention development, as it can leverage community members' knowledge, experiences, and insights to create a nuanced intervention which meets the needs, preferences, and realities of the population of interest. Community engagement exists along a spectrum from outreach to the community to partnership with community members and organizations, and all levels of community engagement can benefit from systematic documentation of c…

  PublisherDOI

• Engaging in the Life-planning in Early Alzheimer’s and other Dementias advance care planning intervention is associated with perceived advance care planning concordance and interpersonal connectedness

  The Gerontologist · 2025-08-05 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Persons living with dementia often rely upon a care partner as their surrogate medical decision maker, yet little is known about how dementia care dyads achieve advance care planning (ACP) concordance: when a care partner fully understands a care recipient's values and preferences as best they can. Examining data from a pilot study of the online Life-planning in Early Alzheimer's and other Dementias (LEAD) intervention to better understand how dyads achieve perceived A…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improving Respite Outcomes for Caregivers: Who Benefits and Under What Conditions?

  Journal of Applied Gerontology · 2025-03-11 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) pose a substantial caregiving burden in the United States, yet efforts to improve caregiver well-being have seen mixed results. We ask whether an app-based intervention ( N = 143) to prioritize caregiver respite can substantially improve the caregiving experience, and whether these benefits are moderated by (1) caregiver demographics and (2) conditions of the caregiving situation (such as baseline impairment). Constructing curvilinear growth model…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael S. Caserta

  University of Utah

  33 shared

• Eli Iacob

  University of Utah

  30 shared

• Kara Dassel

  University of Utah

  24 shared

• Ken R. Smith

  23 shared

• Katherine Supiano

  University of Utah

  23 shared

• Dale A. Lund

  Cornell University

  21 shared

• Amber Thompson

  University of Houston

  18 shared

• Katherine Ornstein

  Johns Hopkins University

  14 shared

Labs

• Behavioral Medicine Research GroupPI

  Engage with a dynamic interdisciplinary group of researchers including core Health Psychology faculty, affiliated faculty in the U of U Medical Center, and health-focused graduate students across all areas of the department.

Similar researchers at University of Utah

• Cynthia Bergh-57
• Lisa Diamondh-52
• Djin L. Tayh-11