The Legacy of Lizette Peterson-Homer in Pediatric Psychology (1951-2002)

Lizette Peterson-Homer was an exceptional clinical researcher, dedicated teacher and mentor, and supportive colleague and friend to many in pediatric psychology. Her innovative applications were coupled with strong methodological standards in creating a superb portfolio of contributions to the field. Lizette’s premature death on July 18, 2002, was a loss for the discipline of psychology and particularly for the field of pediatric psychology. By way of facts on her vita, Lizette received her B.S. degree from Utah State University in 1973, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Utah working with Donna Gelfand and Don Hartmann. Upon award of her doctorate in 1978, she started as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri– Columbia, where her rise through the professorial ranks culminated in the award of the Byler Endowed Chair in 1998 and Curator’s Professor in 2001. Lizette had also received recognition from her university for the excellence of her contributions in 1988 through the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creativity in the Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Frederick A. Middlebush Endowed Chair for a five-year appointment. Over her career she produced an extraordinary number of articles and chapters, and presented at a large number of national and international conferences. In particular, Lizette was an invited plenary speaker at the Florida Conference on Child Health Psychology and the Kansas Conference in Clinical Child Psychology where she presented on her conceptualizations about children’s healthy development and effective interventions to enhance the lives of children and their families based on empirically founded clinical research. She was a frequently sought-after consultant on a range of issues, and gra-