Catherine Taylor
Professor
Biography
Catherine Taylor, PhD, LCSW, MPH, is a Professor with dual experience and training in social work and public health, with a foundation in biological sciences. She completed her MSW/MPH at Boston University and then trained at the UCLA School of Public Health in community health sciences, epidemiology, and media studies. She went on to be a post-doctoral scholar at Columbia University School of Social Work, focused on the development and assessment of preventive interventions to prevent child abuse. She then joined Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine in New Orleans (2005-2020) as faculty, where she became the Founding Director of their Violence Prevention Institute and Pincus Violence Prevention Scholarship program and developed their first course on “violence as a public health problem.” Professor Taylor joined Boston College in 2020 and directs the Child and Behavioral Health Research Innovations (CABHRI) lab, which conducts and translates research to enhance the social and behavioral health of children and families. The lab’s work emphasizes preventive interventions and dissemination strategies to improve overall well-being and disrupt intergenerational cycles of childhood trauma, violence, and abuse. Prospective doctoral applicants are encouraged to apply for a spot in the lab. Taylor co-leads a longitudinal, mixed methods, randomized controlled trial (RCT) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The RCT (n=823) was designed to assess the short- and long-term efficacy of two brief, relatively low-resource preventive intervention parenting programs with potential for wide dissemination. The qualitative aim is assessing the key social ecological contexts that impact parenting via in-depth interviews with primary caregivers as well as focus groups with pediatric care providers. Extensive data have been collected to assess individual, dyadic, and social-ecological constructs relevant to parenting, including three forms of quantitative data: 1) dyadic (mother-child) observational data, which assessed the quality and synchrony of the relationship such as parent sensitivity, child involvement, and dyadic reciprocity using the Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) rating system; 2) dyadic (mother-child) Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) readings representative of autonomic nervous system emotional and behavioral self-regulation; and 3) parent self-report via telephone or face-to-face interviews of constructs such as: parenting discipline behaviors and attitudes, stress, and mental health; exposure to intimate partner and/or neighborhood violence in adulthood, and adverse experiences in childhood (ACEs); perceived social norms relevant to parenting; and COVID-related experiences. Professor Taylor welcomes interest from prospective and current students as well as postdoctoral researchers in a variety of fields (e.g.,social work, public health, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, or other related fields in social behavioral and mental health sciences), who are interested in working with data from this project either directly in her lab or collaborating with her team. To learn more, please reach out to Dr. Taylor ( taylorcw@bc.edu ) directly.