HEAL Prevention Cooperative Podcast Series: Women Leading Prevention Science

On this page:

Overview

During these 20-30 minute podcasts, listeners will be introduced to two HEAL Prevention Cooperative pdf  0 bytes women researchers who will discuss their work and experiences in prevention science. The podcasts highlight these women leaders’ important and groundbreaking prevention research, share information about their career pathways, and encourage young women to pursue prevention research as a career.

The podcasts can be accessed by clicking the links below, or by searching for Women Leading Prevention Science in a variety of streaming services, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Alexa, Overcast, PocketCasts, Castro, Castbox, and Podchaser.

Topics Covered

  • Hear from researchers about the public health problems they are trying to solve through their work.
  • Learn about how they entered the prevention science field.
  • Hear about their accomplishments, rewards, and challenges of working in the prevention science field.
  • Hear about how they were mentored in their career and how they value mentoring others.
  • Hear their advice and lessons learned for younger female researchers.
  • Learn how they balance their work and personal lives.

Podcast Episodes

Podcast #1: Mentoring our Future Bosses

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Maureen Walton, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a Professor and the Associate Chair for Research and Research Faculty Development in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. She also is the Senior Associate Director of the Injury Prevention Center, and Associate Director for Child Research at the Addiction Center. Dr. Walton collaborates with multi-disciplinary teams on projects funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Walton is committed to teaching and mentoring students and trainees, including as a faculty mentor with the Addiction Center’s T32 post-doctoral fellowship funded by NIAAA. She has worked on projects that developed evidence-based, single session behavioral interventions to reduce risky substance use (e.g., alcohol, cannabis, prescription drug misuse) among patients in medical settings. More recently, her work has included testing remotely delivered interventions (i.e., telehealth session, messaging platform) to prevent opioid misuse among young people in the emergency department. In addition, Dr. Walton is working on testing the efficacy of social media delivered interventions to reduce risky substance use among adolescents and emerging adults and examining mobile health for assessment and intervention delivery, including conducting micro-randomized trials. She has also done work on developing an evidence-based single session intervention (SafERteens), which reduces youth violence and alcohol misuse; subsequently, she is leading translation studies integrating the SafERteens intervention into clinical care. More recently, this work has expanded to focus on optimizing telehealth interventions to reduce violence and alcohol misuse among adolescents and emerging adults using a Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Controlled Trial design.

Elizabeth D’Amico, Ph.D., Senior Behavioral Scientist, RAND Corporation, is a licensed clinical psychologist nationally recognized for her work developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions for adolescents and young adults. She is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. Dr. D’Amico has evaluated motivational interventions (MI) with adolescents and young adults in a variety of settings, including middle schools, primary care, homeless shelters, and teen court. She has grants focused on prevention for substance use for urban Native American adolescents and young adults that integrate MI with traditional practices, such as beading and Native American cooking. She is currently conducting a large clinical trial to address suicide prevention among Alaska Native youth in Alaska. She has conducted epidemiological work to examine predictors and consequences of adolescent substance use, and is the principal investigator of a longitudinal study examining substance use patterns over 18 years among youth from sixth grade through age 28. Her most recent work has focused on the effects of medical marijuana advertising on adolescents’ marijuana use. In 2016, Dr. D’Amico was recognized as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association for Division 50 (Society of Addiction Psychology). She received the Mentor of the Year Award in 2018 from RAND's Behavioral and Policy Sciences.

Podcast #2: Career Choices that Complement Your Life

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Amy Yule, M.D., is the medical director of the Addiction Recovery Management Service at Massachusetts General Hospital where she works with youth ages 14 to 26 with substance use disorders and co-occurring psychiatric illness and their families.  She is also an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In addition to providing clinical care Dr. Yule is involved in clinical research. She has been the recipient of grant funding from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Massachusetts General Hospital Louis V. Gerstner research scholar award, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Her research interests include the investigation of risk factors for adolescent onset substance use disorders, risk factors associated with risky behaviors in youth with substance use disorders such as overdose, and the impact of medication treatment for youth with substance use disorders and co-occurring psychiatric illness.  She is currently the primary investigator for a study evaluating the effect of treatment with quetiapine (Seroquel) for youth with a substance use disorder and bipolar disorder.

Jessica Cance, M.P.H., Ph.D., is a Senior Research Public Health Analyst in the Substance Use Prevention, Evaluation, and Research Program of RTI International’s Behavioral Health Research Division. For 20 years, Dr. Cance has focused her research and practice experience on addressing substance misuse from a public health perspective. Dr. Cance has led and contributed to epidemiological research, program implementation and evaluation projects, and coalition building supported by state, federal, and foundation funding. Her qualitative analysis skills include individual interview, focus group, and site visit analysis; her specialized quantitative analysis skills focus on person-centered methodologies (latent growth modeling, latent class analysis, and multilevel modeling). Dr. Cance served as an assistant professor in Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin for six years where she led and collaborated on epidemiological and etiological research with existing datasets and national evaluation research. Dr. Cance also worked for four years in the Texas state government, including at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the Texas Department of State Health Services where she provided technical assistance and contract oversight to community agencies funded to build coalitions and deliver substance use and misuse prevention programming throughout the state; developed and executed the state’s strategy related to opioid misuse prevention; oversaw the analysis and dissemination of public health administrative data; led the agency’s efforts to enhance the state’s capacity to rapidly respond to the opioid overdose crisis through improved data collection; and served as the surveillance lead for the state’s strategic plan to address substance use from a public health perspective.

Podcast #3: Pursuing Your Passions

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Tyra Pendergrass Boomer, B.A., M.A., is the Deputy Director of Partnerships and Programs, play2PREVENT Lab at the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games. She has conducted a wide variety of research. At Howard University, Ms. Boomer conducted research on two species of plants that have the ability to take metal out of the soil, in hopes that they could be used to revitalize contaminated areas. While at Yale, she was able to employ her research expertise to address issues of food access in New Haven where helped to design a research project to assess local perceptions regarding access to healthy foods in the city. The results from this research helped to guide the development of a social marketing campaign to increase awareness about fresh foods, targeted at specific neighborhoods in the city where access is scarce. In her position as Community Outreach and Engagement Specialist for a national children’s environmental health study, she was responsible for establishing and maintaining community partnerships to aid in recruitment efforts and assist in maintaining a community presence. She identified and maintained partnerships with over 50 community organizations throughout New Haven County. In her capacity of Associate Director for the play2PREVENT Lab at the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games, Ms. Boomer is instrumental in building and maintaining community partnerships, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the lab, and presenting the lab’s research in local, national, and international settings. She was a 2013 Connecticut Health Foundation Health Leader Fellow and a 2018-2019 Advanced Health Science Research Fellow with the Yale School of Medicine.

Elvira Elek, Ph.D., is a Senior Public Health Analyst at RTI International where she leads the Substance Use Prevention, Evaluation and Research program in RTI’s Center for Behavioral Health Epidemiology, Implementation, and Evaluation Research. For more than 20 years, Dr. Elek has worked as an analyst, methodologist, project director, and co-investigator of multiple community-based evaluations and research studies related to substance use prevention interventions. Her earlier work included the evaluation of the “keepin’ it REAL” culturally targeted and school-based substance use prevention intervention, a look at intervention adaption to rural settings, a longitudinal examination of peer intervention in substance use, and the development and evaluation of an alcohol prevention intervention based on media literacy and active planning of messages. Since starting at RTI more than 10 years ago, Dr. Elek has evaluated community-based alcohol prevention initiatives in Georgia, helped develop the evaluation plans and conduct analyses of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)-funded Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grants (SPF SIG) across multiple states, led the development of substance use-related epidemiological reports and fact sheets for the District of Columbia, and led a formative examination of preventing alcohol use during pregnancy. From 2013 to 2018 she was deputy project director of the Program Evaluation for Prevention Contract (PEP-C), which consisted of national cross-site evaluations of five SAMHSA-funded community-based programs focused on reducing alcohol use, prescription drug misuse, other substance use, and related consequences. She led the Strategic Prevention Framework Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS) cross-site national evaluation under this contract. In 2021, she began leading the follow-up to PEP-C, which focuses on the evaluation of SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework for Prescription Drugs (SPF-Rx). She is the project director and communications and coordination task lead for the HEAL Prevention Coordinating Center, a NIDA-funded cooperative agreement that supports the evaluation of 10 separate strategies to address the prevention of opioid misuse and opioid use disorder among adolescents and young adults.

Podcast #4: Forging Strong Relationships

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Beth Stormshak, Ph.D., is a Knight Chair and Professor in the Counseling Psychology and Human Services Department in the College of Education and the Director of the Prevention Science Institute at the University of Oregon. Dr. Stormshak's research focuses on understanding risk factors in early and middle childhood associated with the development of problem behavior in late adolescence, including substance use and delinquency. Her primary research focus includes testing the efficacy of family-centered interventions, such as the Family Check-Up, that reduce the later risk of problem behavior. She also studies the process of dissemination of evidence-based interventions into real world community settings and has developed an online version of the Family Check-Up for wide-scale dissemination. She has worked collaboratively with a variety of service providers, including elementary and middle schools in the state of Oregon as well as community mental health agencies. She has served as the principal investigator on multiple grants, including randomized trials that tested the efficacy and effectiveness of family-centered models of prevention to reduce risk behavior in early childhood, in school-age children, and in adolescents, with a primary focus on enhancing parenting skills and behavioral management.

Leslie Leve, Ph.D., is the Lorry Lokey Chair in the College of Education, Associate Vice President of Research, and Associate Director for the Prevention Research Institute at the University of Oregon. She is best known for her research on child and adolescent development, gene-environment interplay, and interventions for underserved children, families, and communities. This includes preventive intervention studies with youth in foster care or juvenile justice system, adoption studies that examine the interplay between biological and social influences on development, and COVID-19 testing outreach programs for Latinx communities. She co-directs a Center on parenting in the context of opioid use. Her work also focuses on outcomes for girls and women. To date, she has published more than 190 scientific articles and 20 book chapters. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Education.

Podcast #5: The Balancing Act

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Danica Knight, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at Texas Christian University, Associate Director of Research at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development, and Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Behavioral Research. Dr. Knight’s research is designed to improve adolescent health and functioning by strengthening relationships with caregivers, family members, and others in their social networks. Her publications focus on identifying factors affecting adolescent recovery from substance use; improving substance use screening, assessment, and treatment services for justice-involved youth; and understanding organizational factors associated with the adoption, implementation, and use of best practices. Dr. Knight currently serves as principal investigator on four NIDA-funded grants, two of which are cooperative agreements under the NIH HEAL Initiative. Her Leveraging Safe Adults project tests the effectiveness of Trust-based Relational Intervention® in preventing substance use among justice-involved youth as they transition home after secure residential care.

Margaret Kuklinski, Ph.D., is Director of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington, where she supports efforts to disseminate interventions to communities, families, and agencies. For more than a decade, she has led or contributed to studies that promote healthy behaviors and positive development. She serves as co-principal investigator on the longitudinal evaluation of the Communities That Care prevention system which has demonstrated impact on preventing drug use and antisocial behavior from adolescence into young adulthood. She is also co-principal investigator on a multisite trial testing the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing Guiding Good Choices, a prevention program for parents of adolescents, in three regionally and socioeconomically diverse healthcare systems. She currently co-chairs the Health Economics Working Group for a set of projects funded under NIDA’s HEAL Prevention Initiative aimed at preventing opioid misuse in adolescents and young adults. As a health economist, Dr. Kuklinski has been involved in national efforts, conducted under the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine as well as the Society for Prevention Research, to establish best practices for cost, benefit-cost, and cost-effectiveness analysis of interventions for children, youth, and families. She routinely consults and lectures on health economics and prevention science and is an elected board member of the Society for Prevention Research.

Podcast #6: Next Gen Prevention Science: Meet the Hosts of WLPS

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Sara Hairgrove, B.A., is a public health analyst in the Substance Use Prevention, Evaluation, and Research Program at RTI International. There, she focuses on opioid and stimulant misuse, prevention, intervention, and harm reduction. Ms. Hairgrove specializes in qualitative data collection and analysis with both youth and adult populations. She served as host for the first season of Women Leading Prevention Science, and as co-host for the second season. Prior to her time at RTI, Ms. Hairgrove worked in higher education, developing and delivering trainings focused on the academic success of international students. Ms. Hairgrove is currently pursuing her Master of Public Health with a focus on Health Equity.

Jasmine Ramirez, B.S., is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oregon’s counseling psychology program. Jasmine’s graduate research is focused on family-centered interventions particularly the effects of culturally-adapted parent training models, and how those training models may increase the utilization and efficacy of treatment for ethnic minorities. Part of her current work is looking at the efficacy of a parent training model in reducing long-term substance abuse and associated risk factors for Latinx families residing in Oregon. Prior to beginning her graduate studies at the University of Oregon, Ms. Ramirez worked as a lead research assistant at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital assisting with data collection for studies of evidence-based treatments on Spanish-speaking populations.

Podcast #7: Building Partnerships in School Settings

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Lynn E. Fiellin, M.D., is a Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine, the Yale Child Study Center, and the Yale School of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences). She is a founding director of the play2PREVENT Lab at Yale and the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health including NICHD, NIDA, NIAAA, the NIH/FDA, the CVS Health Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the BEST Foundation/Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. She is recognized as a Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year Winner. Her work focuses on developing and testing novel videogame interventions to promote health and wellness and reduce risk in youth and young adults including HIV prevention and risk reduction, HIV testing and counseling, tobacco and marijuana smoking, e-cigarette use and vaping prevention, and most recently opioid misuse prevention in adolescents.

Lily A. Hoerner, B.A., is a Postgraduate Research Associate in the play2PPREVENT lab, where she is working on a large randomized controlled trial around the state of Connecticut with the research team. Lily graduated with her Bachelor’s in Psychological Sciences from the University of Connecticut and is currently pursuing her Master of Community Psychology at the University of New Haven.

Podcast #8: Engaging Youth Experiencing Homelessness

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Jodi Ford, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, is a Professor, Director of the Stress Science Lab, and Assistant Director of the Martha S. Pitzer Center for Women, Children and Youth in the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University. Dr. Ford’s research examines the interplay between the social, spatial, and biological determinants of adolescent and young adult health, and their contribution to social inequities in health. Her research is informed by her clinical background as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in primary care and is rooted in multilevel and life course theories. She has led NIH and other interdisciplinary funded research studies, including a large primary biomarker data collection effort that incorporated stress biomarkers into a longitudinal cohort study on the effects of activity space exposures on adolescent health resulting is a unique repository of multilevel data. She is currently a multiple principal investigator of an NIH R01 study using this data to investigate patterns of adversity across childhood and adolescence that increase adolescents’ risk for shorter telomere length – a marker of cellular aging. In addition, she is a co-investigator of the HOME study funded by NIDA under the NIH HEAL Initiative, which is testing a randomized Housing First intervention linked with opioid and related risk prevention services for the prevention of opioid use disorder among youth experiencing homelessness.   

Natasha Slesnick, Ph.D., is Education and Human Ecology (EHE) Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Research at The Ohio State University. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, and her research focuses on prevention intervention development and evaluation with substance using youth experiencing homelessness and substance using mothers and their children. She has consulted with multiple organizations on the best strategies for intervening in youth homelessness and adolescent substance use. She has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1998 and has written more than 125 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and books. She has opened a drop-in center for homeless youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Columbus, Ohio. 

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Marina Tolou-Shams, Ph.D., is the Kilroy Realty Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair for Community Engagement, Outreach and Advocacy in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is also the Deputy Vice Chair of Research in Psychiatry at Zuckerberg SF General Hospital. Trained as a pediatric and forensic psychologist, she has many years of providing direct clinical care in the community. Her clinical-community direct care experiences inform partnerships and collaborations with youth, families, and systems to intentionally co-design and implement research studies. She leads the UCSF Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health (JJBH) lab whose mission is to improve behavioral health outcomes for youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice, child welfare, and foster care systems. With over 100 peer-reviewed publications, her JJBH NIH-funded studies aim to improve youths’ physical, mental, and emotional health, reduce drug and alcohol use, reduce HIV/STI risk behaviors and prevent system re-entry. Studies take an ecodevelopmental approach to identifying multiple ways to improve access to and engagement in behavioral health care for these youth, thereby addressing individual and structural health inequities. Studies also include specific emphasis on gender and trauma-responsive interventions for girls in the juvenile justice system as well as researching ways to leverage technology to improve access to behavioral health care for justice-impacted and foster care youth and families. Dr. Tolou-Shams also has a strong commitment to mentoring and is a NIDA K24 career development awardee with emphasis on training junior scholars in research focused on systems-impacted youth and substance use. 

Yang Yang, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Institute of Behavioral Research, Texas Christian University. She is an Experimental Psychologist by training. Dr. Yang has experiences in both laboratory-based studies examining mechanisms underlying various psychosocial and behavioral patterns and applied research exploring prevention and intervention strategies for addressing substance use and related issues. Dr. Yang is interested in two broad areas: prevention and intervention for substance use and psychological functioning central to positive psychology. She has contributed to the field by adopting advanced quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine the efficacy and implementation of prevention intervention strategies of substance use and to understand risk and protective factors for treatment process and outcomes in justice-involved populations. Dr. Yang has conducted evaluation and intervention studies on positive psychology in general populations and justice-involved women. Dr. Yang has published several peer-reviewed articles and been serving as editor and reviewer for peer-reviewed journals. 

Podcast #10: Recognizing the Unique Needs and Strengths of Immigrant Youth

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Lissette Saavedra, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Psychologist at RTI International. Currently she serves as the Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Justice grant focused on delivery of telemental health services for trauma-exposed victims of crime living in rural areas. Dr. Saavedra’s research focuses on developing assessment and intervention approaches for individuals who experience trauma and related consequences. In her extensive work with immigrant youth and families, she developed expertise in culturally responsive and congruent adaptations of interventions that include input from client and provider representatives to ensure approaches and recommendations are scientifically sound and congruent with the needs and perspectives of the individuals served.  Dr. Saavedra has delivered and evaluated interventions in several modalities including clinic, community, and school-based and has actively worked with community-based organizations around recruitment and retention in both research and practice settings for over 20 years.

Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, Ed.D., LPC, MCHES, NCC is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (General Medicine), of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science, and in the Child Study Center, the Founding Director of Youth4Wellness at Yale, and the Deputy Director of Mental Health & Well-Being at the play2PREVENT (p2P) Lab/Yale Center for Health & Learning Games. In her role at the p2P Lab, she was the Project Director of a NIH-/NIDA-funded Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative to address opioid misuse in youth in school-based health centers. She also served as a Guest Editor in the forthcoming Supplemental Issue in Prevention Science Journal highlighting the coordinated efforts among 10 HEAL research projects across the nation in preventing opioid misuse. Recently, Dr. Fernandes became a Yale Center for Clinical Investigation Scholar where she was awarded a mentored career development award by NIH/NCATS to design and to evaluate a digital game to prevent suicide among youth who misuse substances, including opioids. Other research interests focus on youth-led participatory action research and the translation of policies into practices and successful transitions from high school to post-secondary education, employment, and healthcare. Dr. Fernandes aims to use evidence-based research to inform federal-, state-, and local-level policies and to provide support to schools in their youth-led implementation efforts. Dr. Fernandes also practices as a licensed professional counselor and serves on the Board of Directors for the Connecticut Association of School-Based Health Centers as Treasurer and the Digital Well-Being Advisory Board at the Peer Health Exchange. 

Podcast #11: Championing Prevention Science at the Federal Level

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Sarah Steverman, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a Social Behavioral Scientist Administrator in the Prevention Research Branch at NIDA, NIH. Her program areas focus on prevention research in healthcare settings and research on policies and environmental strategies to prevent substance misuse. Dr. Steverman came to NIDA from Abt Associates, where she focused on behavioral health policy, research, and dissemination of evidence-based interventions. Previously, she was a Public Health Analyst at SAMHSA and has led policy efforts at Mental Health America and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Dr. Steverman began her career working in direct service with individuals with co-occurring substance use and mental disorders.  

Podcast #12: Intersecting Identities: First Gen Women Scientists

Listen on Apple, Spotify, and Google.

Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the Addiction Center within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan; she is also a member of the University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center. Dr. Bonar studies ways to prevent and treat substance use disorders spanning developmental periods of adolescence, emerging adulthood and adulthood. Her work uses novel technologies including social media, telemedicine, and patient portal approaches, and often employs Motivational Interviewing. She is a first-generation academic and proud graduate of Northern Kentucky University and Bowling Green State University.

Alina Palimaru, Ph.D., is a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Her research focuses on the juncture of poverty and health, including health outcomes measurement, quality of life, disability, housing, and food insecurity. She has been studying the impact of quality of care on quality of life in the context of disabling pathologies (spinal cord injury), but also mental health and aging populations. Because communication is a vital component of research, Dr. Palimaru has also pursued the complementary discipline of knowledge transfer, through polished presentations (substance with style), and as a co-producer on a series of award-winning films in health care. As associate producer on the award-winning Spinal Injury Patient Film, and Choosing a Wheelchair, Palimaru played a key role in the development and production of patient-centered communications. These projects included considerable fundraising elements. These successful films were adopted as communication tools by NHS spinal injury centers and UK NGOs.  

Podcast #13: Including Indigenous Voices in Prevention Research

Listen on Apple and Spotify.

Hannah LaBounty, LMSW, CCSW, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a passion for improving the lives of children and families. Hannah's professional journey has been marked by a series of impactful roles throughout her 13 years of service to the Cherokee Nation. Currently serving as the Behavioral Health Clinical Services Supervisor for the HERO Program at Cherokee Nation, Hannah significantly contributes to enhancing client and family outcomes. As the Project Director of the System of Care grant and a supervisor for the HEAL grant in partnership with Emory University, Hannah plays a crucial role in leading and supporting her colleagues as they work to address mental health and substance misuse issues, further demonstrating her commitment to improving community mental health initiatives.

Prior to her current position, Hannah served as therapist within the Cherokee Nation Behavioral Health-HERO Project. Here, she worked collaboratively with Native American youth, children, and families, addressing mental health concerns and providing clinical support. Hannah's expertise in diagnostic evaluation and treatment planning, coupled with her dedication to maintaining up-to-date knowledge on special populations, ensured comprehensive care for her clients. In addition to her extensive professional experience, Hannah possesses a diverse range of skills and has received training in various evidence-based interventions. Her skill set includes Play Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and more. These certifications and trainings highlight Hannah's commitment to continuous learning and her ability to provide comprehensive and effective care.

With a track record of making a positive impact within the Cherokee Nation Reservation, Hannah is a dedicated professional who strives to empower individuals and families to overcome challenges and achieve their full potential.

Bethany Jolly Livingston, B.S., is an Associate Director of Research Projects at Emory University who has over 10 years’ experience managing large NIH funded research trials. Bethany is the project manager on a complex prevention trial focused on the prevention of adolescent substance use that is a partnership between Emory University and Cherokee Nation.  In her role at Emory, she manages all aspects of the grant process, contributes to intervention development, oversees intervention field staff, and mentors junior colleagues and students. Prior to her work at Emory, Bethany was a Research Administrator for the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) where she oversaw the grant management of the NNLM’s South-Central Region, led grant trainings, and coordinated between regional partners and the National Institute of Health. Additionally, Bethany has served as the Research Coordinator for numerous NIH and foundation grants at the University of Florida.

You May Also Be Interested In:

HEAL Prevention Webinar Series

This webinar series will present current topics, research, and findings on the prevention of opioid misuse and use disorder. 

View Webinar Series page

Preventing Opioid Use Disorder

NIH is supporting a series of studies to develop and test effective strategies to prevent opioid misuse and OUD among vulnerable populations.

View Research Program page

HEAL Prevention Initiative (HPI) Year 3 Meeting

The presentations focused on priorities in the advancement of prevention strategies to address opioid misuse and opioid use disorder.

View Past Event page