Dr. Donna Sanders is the first postdoctoral scholar at the WeissmanHood Research Institute at Touro University and a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner. She earned her doctorate from Montana State University as a fully funded ANEW Scholar, completing advanced clinical and interdisciplinary training focused on delivering primary mental health care in rural and medically underserved regions. Her early research identified patterns of somatic symptom reporting in school health records as early indicators of pediatric anxiety, laying the groundwork for a novel, data-driven model of early detection.

Dr. Sanders currently leads Grow with Grit, a first-of-its-kind translational research initiative that combines artificial intelligence, trauma-informed school health workflows, and  neurobiofeedback-based self-regulation training to proactively identify and address anxiety in children aged 8 to 12. Uniquely designed for rural implementation, the program leverages existing school data infrastructure—including nurse visit logs, chronic absenteeism, and Medicaid claims—to flag at-risk students and streamline access to tiered mental health interventions. The model is adaptable to both nurse-staffed and nurse-absent schools, directly addressing the scarcity of mental health providers in frontier settings.