Kelly Costello Allison, PhD

Kelly C. Allison, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Co-Director of Education at the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders. She received her B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 1995 and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Miami University in 1997 and 2000, respectively.

Dr. Allison's research interests include characterizing and treating the Night Eating Syndrome and the role of weight and eating behaviors on reproductive health. Dr. Allison is also the Director of Education at the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders, leading didactic seminars for pre-doctoral psychology practicum students and supervising their clinical work. She serves as a faculty mentor for undergraduate and medical student research projects. Dr. Allison also enjoys providing psychotherapy related to weight loss and disordered eating through the Stunkard Weight Management Program, and she provides pre-operative bariatric surgery psychological evaluations at Penn Medicine.

Dr. Allison is a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders and a member of the Obesity Society and the American Psychological Association. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and chapters, and two books.

Dr. Allison can be contacted at: Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, 3535 Market St., Suite 3021, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3309, 215-898-7314. Her e-mail address is kca@mail.med.upenn.edu.

Recent publications include:

Allison KC. Cognitive behavioral therapy manual for night eating syndrome. In JD Lundgren, KC Allison, & AJ Stunkard (Eds.).  Night Eating Syndrome: Research, Assessment, and Treatment.  New York: Guilford.  In press.  

Lundgren JD, Allison KC, Stunkard AJ, Bulik CM, Thornton LM, Lindroos AK, Rasmussen F. Lifetime medical and psychiatric comorbidity of night eating behavior in the Swedish twin study of adults: genes and environment (STAGE). Psychiatry Research, in press.

Moizé V, Gluck ME, Torres F, Andreu A, Vidal J, Allison KC.  Transcultural adaptation of the Night Eating Questionnaire (NEQ) for its use in the Spanish population. Eating Behaviors, in press.

Allison KC, Wenzel A, Kleiman K, Sarwer DB.  Development of a brief measure of postpartum distress.  Journal of Women’s Health, 2011;2:617-623.

Allison KC, Lundgren JD, O’Reardon JP, Geliebter A, Gluck ME, Vinai P, Mitchell JE, Schenck CH, Howell MJ, Crow SJ, Engel S, Latzer Y, Tzischinsky O, Mahowald MW, Stunkard AJ.  Proposed diagnostic criteria for night eating syndrome. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2010;43:241-247.