Ronald Asiimwe, assistant professor in Family Social Science, has been honored with the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy John Douglas Award for his EFT initiatives in East Africa. The John Douglas Award is an annual award given to an EFT member who has made a significant contribution to the growth of the EFT model internationally.

Emotionally focused therapy is an evidence-based intervention for treating various problems among couples including, marital distress, depression, anxiety, and trauma. The EFT model is well known as a humanistic approach to psychotherapy and is based in the science of attachment theory. ICEEFT is an international community of over 6,000 mental health professionals in 40 countries committed to promoting the understanding and application of the EFT model.

Asiimwe joins the FSoS faculty this year in the Couple and Family Therapy Doctoral program. His research program integrates multicultural perspectives to study how trauma affects parenting, child/youth outcomes, and overall couple and family relationship functioning in underserved communities in the USA and in Sub-Saharan Africa. He also has research interests in measurement and scale development, alongside the development of systemic family therapy in Africa. This fall he also begins service on the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Board of Directors.

He received his doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Studies, with a specialization in Couple and Family Therapy, from Michigan State University. He received a Master of Science in Marriage & Family Therapy from Oklahoma Baptist University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Community Psychology from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, his home country.