I joined the faculty of the Department of Public Health at WKU in the fall of 2008
and serve as the Director of the MPH program. Prior to obtaining my doctoral degree I
worked extensively with families and MCH populations, including 20 years caring for
preterm and low birth-weight infants, conducting assessments and interventions with
at-risk infants and their families, supervising and training hospital and community-based
health care personnel, and directing a research and demonstration home visitation program
for adolescent mothers in which I developed and implemented training for the program’s
lay home visitors. 

My research has focused primarily on evaluation of intervention strategies and programs
for children and families as well as studying statewide service utilization, access to
health care, and health risk behaviors (correlated with functional ability) of clients in
a state mental health/mental retardation system. My particular interests include
influences on developmental gains in at risk children and children with disabilities,
contextual factors that influence family adaptation to having a child with a disability
and their participation in the child’s intervention as well as effectiveness of home
visiting models for at risk children and families. Throughout my career as an educator in
the U.S. and abroad, I have studied the effectiveness of home-based early intervention
programs for families with young children in a variety of cultures.

Developmental disabilities

Association of Early Childbearing and Low Cognitive Ability (with Beverly A. Mulvihill, Lorraine V. Klerman, Jan L. Wallander, Mary E. Hovinga, and David T. Redden), Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (2002)

CONTEXT: Teenage pregnancy remains a pressing social issue and public health problem in the United...