It is with great pleasure that the Child Maltreatment Editorial Board welcomes the following new members for a five-year term effective immediately.
Gia Elise Barboza-Salerno, J.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Dr. Barboza has an interdisciplinary background in law, policy, statistics and victimization, including child maltreatment. Dr. Barboza's scholarship explores the multiple contextual influences of risk, including trauma, externalizing behaviors and substance abuse, on manifestations of interpersonal violence in vulnerable populations. Her work utilizes a variety of methodological perspectives and approaches including Latent Class and Growth Mixture Modeling, Parallel Process Modeling, and spatial statistics and Bayesian spacetime modeling. Dr. Barboza is also an attorney who represents victims of domestic violence.
Stephanie D. Block, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Her research has broadly focused on children in the legal system, the effect of trauma on children's wellbeing and memory for emotional events, and the prevention of child maltreatment. Guided by a social-ecological perspective and interdisciplinary training, she conducts research that generates knowledge and informs public policy relevant to children in the child welfare and legal systems.
Derek S. Brown, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work (Brown School) at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on the economic causes and consequences of child maltreatment, and the rigorous evaluation of health and social policies, including Medicaid, using administrative data. He teaches courses in economic evaluation, quantitative methods, and health economics.
Catherine Corr, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is interested in supporting the well-being of young children with disabilities (birth-8years old) and their families. She addresses issues of maltreatment, abuse, neglect, trauma, toxic stress, and poverty in the context of early childhood special education research, policy, personnel preparation, and practice. She also examines ways to utilize mixed methods approaches to social inquiry in special education.
Chris Derauf, M.D. is a consultant in the Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and an associate professor of pediatrics at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. His clinical and teaching work focuses on the evaluation and care of abused and neglected children. Chris research interests include prenatal drug exposure and child health and neuro-developmental outcomes, health disparities, and child physical abuse. He is a member of APSAC, ISPCAN, and the Helfer Society. He has over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Chris is married and has two teenage children.
Louise Dixon, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Victoria University of Wellington where she directs the postgraduate Forensic Psychology Programme. She is a Registered Psychologist in NZ and the UK and enjoy an active international research profile that has centred on the study of intimate partner violence and child maltreatment. Her research addresses issues related to aetiology, risk assessment, offender rehabilitation, programme evaluation, and primary prevention. As such it has influenced practice and policy in correctional, policing, psychological, health, and political areas. She is also a Trustee for Male Survivors Aotearoa and a Fellow of the International Society for Research on Aggression.
Amy Dworsky, M.S.W, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on transition age youth in foster care and youth experiencing homelessness. She has experience using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, analyzing administrative data, and partnering with public and nonprofit agencies to conduct policy and practice relevant research. She is a nationally recognized expert on pregnant and parenting youth in foster care and on the link between homelessness and child welfare system involvement. Dr. Dworsky received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
Kate Guastaferro, Ph.D., M.P.H. is an assistant research professor in the Methodology Center at Penn State. She has a doctorate and masters of public health with a focus on prevention science. Kate completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship in the Prevention and Methodology Training program at Penn State with advanced training centered substantively upon the prevention of child sexual abuse and methodologically on innovative methods for the optimization, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions (e.g., the multiphase optimization strategy [MOST]) with high public health impact. Working at the cutting edge of prevention and intervention science, Dr. Guastaferro's program of research is devoted to the development, optimization, and evaluation of effective, efficient, economical, and scalable interventions, specifically focusing on the prevention of child maltreatment.
Jesse J Helton, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and College of Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the overall safety and wellbeing of maltreated children, particularly those with disabilities. A second line of research examines chronic and episodic household food insecurity and its association to family violence. The goal of this research is to explore the relationship between biological and social mechanisms of parental hunger. He teaches statistics, research methods, and public policy in both the Masters and PhD program.
Julia M. Kobulsky, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in Social Work at Temple University's College of Public Health. She earned her doctorate from Case Western Reserve University's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Her areas of specialization include child neglect, the effects of maltreatment in adolescence, father perpetrated maltreatment, the conceptualization and measurement of maltreatment, the intersection of maltreatment and substance use, and child welfare and behavioral health service systems.
Darcey Merritt, M.S.W., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work. She is an Associate Editor for Children and Youth Services Review (CYSR), a Board member of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) and a member of APSAC and ISPCAN. Dr. Merritt has extensive experience as a practitioner in child welfare systems, and research interests including child maltreatment prevention and experiences of those served by public child welfare systems. She is dedicated to providing empirical and meaningful knowledge useful to bolster the well being of children and families, through contributing their voices in the discussion of prevention methods. Specifically, her research focuses on parenting in socio-economic context, considering the impact of working memory on parental decision-making.
Ashwini Tiwari, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Institute of Public and Preventive Health at Augusta University. Dr. Tiwari's research program focuses on reducing health disparities among high-risk and victimized populations in a family violence context. Her work examines biobehavioral trajectories and responses to trauma-based prevention and intervention efforts, while considering the impact of non-modifiable contextual stressors and intra-individual variation. She has special interests in stress physiological and genetic profiles among victimized youth populations receiving trauma services. Her recent research explores the implementation, barriers and effective components of trauma-based treatments for youth victims of sexual abuse in community settings.
Frank E. Vandervort, J.D. is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. A Past President of the American Professionals Society on the Abuse of Children, he currently serves as Chair of the organization's Amicus Committee. His research interests include child protection, juvenile justice and interdisciplinary practice. He writes and speaks frequently on these topics.
