Agnes (Aggie) Rieger

Hi! I’m a community-engaged researcher, evaluator, and clinician trained in clinical-community psychology. My pronouns are she/her/hers.

My research focuses on: 

• Engagement in trauma prevention and response
  • How can we help individual people, especially youth, engage in trauma-focused interventions?
  • How we can fairly and effectively engage communities in preventing and responding to interpersonal violence?
• Community-level interventions for interpersonal violence
  • How can providers and community members address the context in which interpersonal violence occurs?
  • What needs to happen in order to implement interventions that try to change the context in which interpersonal violence occurs?
• Trauma-informed care, with attention to setting/context
  • How do contexts shape what is not only feasible or acceptable, but what is effective in trauma-informed care?
  • How can we reduce health disparities in trauma-related mental health access and outcomes, especially in rural communities? 

The most meaningful work I have done has integrated research and practice - which is best done on teams. My action-oriented research + practice has included: 

• Evaluating sexual violence prevention efforts across Illinois with the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Illinois Department of Public Health
• Serving as the primary consultant and evaluator for a domestic violence shelter's community-engaged interpersonal violence prevention with public housing
• Co-designing/facilitating Illinois’s Moving Prevention Forward project, which developed recommendations for the state coalition’s sexual violence primary prevention efforts. 

I use my clinical training every day, inside and outside of the clinic. In terms of evidence-based intervention, I especially enjoy:

• Trauma-focused interventions with children, adolescents, and caregivers
• Neuro-affirming socio-sexual health education for Autistic adolescents
• Trauma-focused consultation and trainings beyond clinic walls (with community clinicians, case managers, prevention employees, and violence response advocates)
• Interpretation service partnerships 

As an educator and supervisor, I have especially enjoyed designing and leading education on:

• Service-learning and community-engaged learning
• Systems thinking
• Reflexive practice
• Science communication
• Critical and strengths-based case conceptualization, particularly for youth
• Neurodiversity lenses 

When I’m not researching, providing evidence-based treatment, or teaching/supervising, you can probably find me running to a good audiobook for book club; I've run three marathons. I'm currently on my predoctoral internship at the Charleston Consortium (Medical University of South Carolina), on the child track.