Maggi Price
Associate Professor
Biography
Maggi A. Price (she/her/hers) is an associate professor (with tenure) in the School of Social Work at Boston College, where she runs the Affirm Lab . She and her lab study how to get effective mental health services and prevention programs to youth experiencing trauma and marginalization, including foster youth, transgender youth, and youth of color. Content areas of expertise: Trauma, discrimination, mental health disparities, psychotherapy effectiveness, foster care, evidence-based practices for trauma-exposed youth, gender-affirming mental health practices (for transgender and nonbinary youth). Scientific areas/ methods used: implementation science (how to get effective care used well or widely by new people/systems), community-engaged methods (working directly with target communities and service providers), human-centered design, implementation strategy development and testing (especially digital), hybrid effectiveness-implementation trials, and clinical effectiveness research. Prospective PhD students: Professor Price is excited to review PhD student applications in Fall 2026. Please email her at maggi.price@bc.edu with your CV if you are interested in learning more about opportunities. Mentorship and student opportunities: Professor Price is deeply committed to student mentorship; she equips mentees with the skills needed to lead their own scholarship. To date, she has co-authored 22 peer-reviewed papers with students and trainees (10 first-authored by a student) and 38 conference presentations (29 first-authored by a student, 4 of which received national conference awards). She has also mentored students on 2 funded research grants and supports students in preparing NIH fellowship applications. Her lab alumni have gone on to prestigious doctoral programs (e.g., Harvard, UPenn) and research and clinical positions (e.g., Harvard, BC, MIT). Ongoing projects: Strengthening foster parent skills through evidence-based parenting: Development and pilot testing of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) -based parent training protocol, tailored for foster parents. Funder: Boston College Enhancing high school student and school-staff relationships: Refining and testing a school-wide prevention program called Establish Maintain Restore, designed to strengthen staff–student relationships and reduce mental health disparities across diverse Massachusetts high schools. Funder: National Inst. of Mental Health Improving mental health care for transgender youth: Development and testing of a clinical tailoring and multilevel implementation approach to improve treatment engagement and outcomes for transgender youth. The clinical tailoring approach will reach a wider audience through Price’s forthcoming book Gender Affirming Psychotherapy (Guilford Press, November 2026). Funders: National Inst. of Mental Health, American Psychological Foundation Enabling digital mental health care access for LGBTQ+ youth: Co-developing an online tool to expand access to free, evidence-based mental health resources for LGBTQ youth and their parents. Funder: National Inst. of Mental Health Increasing youth mental health and social connection through art: RCT of a community-based program connecting youth to arts and cultural experiences—concerts, classes, museum visits—as a lower-barrier, non-stigmatizing pathway to improved mental health and social connection. Funder: National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health Scientific & teaching awards: Professor Price's contributions to research in stigma and diversity have been recognized by the American Psychological Foundation (Division 29 Early Career Award), the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Editors' Best of 2022 Award), the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Future Directions Forum and the American Psychological Association. She has also received several mentoring and teaching awards: the BC Illumination Award for Exceptional Mentorship, the BC Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award, and the Yale University Clinical & Community Psychology Leadership Award. Publications & presentations: Most available on the publications and news/media page of her lab’s website www.affirmlab.org. Free online training with CEUs on best practices for supporting transgender youth are provided here for mental health providers and school staff.