Kimberly L. Klages, PhD

I’m a pediatric psychologist and researcher. My work focuses on promoting health-related quality of life and symptom management in children with cancer. Children with cancer often struggle to cope with the side effects of cancer treatment, which often include pain and fatigue. I seek to develop evidence-based, nonpharmacological behavioral treatments for children with cancer-related pain and fatigue.

My passion for improving health-related quality of life in children with cancer began when I was in graduate school. I completed a clinical practicum where I worked with children and families affected by childhood cancer. In this setting, I observed many children struggle to cope with treatment side effects, including pain, which negatively impacted their mental and physical health during and after cancer treatment.

While strong evidence exists for interdisciplinary care models for treating chronic pain, limited nonpharmacological options exist for patients with comorbid cancer pain. Identifying this gap in care motivated me to pursue clinical research in pediatric oncology to meet the needs of patients with cancer-related pain.

My research goals are to advance our understanding of pain in children with cancer using innovative biopsychosocial assessment techniques and to develop empirically driven, novel and cost-effective interdisciplinary interventions to treat pain and improve health-related quality of life in children with cancer.