Robert Ammerman
Dr. Ammerman is a Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s and the Scientific Director of Every Child Succeeds. Dr. Ammerman started at Cincinnati Children’s in 1999. He earned his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. His research focus includes anxiety and maternal depression.
Sarah J. Beal, PhD
Dr. Beal is an Assistant Professor in Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology, where her research primarily emphasizes the overlap among maltreatment and foster care involvement, adolescent bio-psycho-social development and health risk behavior, adolescent and young adult substance use, and normative adolescent and young adult psychosocial development. Her graduate training in developmental psychology and quantitative methods has equipped her to understand the role of adolescence in shaping adult trajectories, how systems influence the developmental course, and methodological techniques that support the analyses of complex data to help us understand these processes. Her K01, funded by NIDA, augmented existing expertise in child welfare to better understand mechanisms linking child maltreatment to the health risk behaviors observed in foster youth, including increased substance use and sexual risk behaviors. This is accomplished using child welfare administrative data linked to electronic health record data from CCHMC and Ohio Department of Health Vital birth records for all children in Hamilton County Job and Family Services custody and a matched comparison sample. Recently, this project was extended by linking our cohort to ECS to understand the impact of a child welfare history on participation in ECS.
Katherine A. Bowers, PhD
Dr. Bowers is an Associate Professor in the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. She trained in perinatal epidemiology with a focus on how exposures and complications during pregnancy can affect offspring development. Dr. Bowers has initiated several studies within ECS, including both health services and etiologic research. Her current research within ECS focuses on how maternal stress and other psychosocial exposures throughout the life-course, including pregnancy, can affect offspring development. The goal of this work is to improve home-visiting through two approaches: identifying biomarkers that help identify children at high risk for developmental impairment and to identify the timing when both adversity and protective factors have the greatest impact on development to inform home visiting services.
Alonzo (Ted) Folger
Dr. Folger is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s and the Director of Evaluation and Epidemiology at Every Child Succeeds. Dr. Folger earned a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Cincinnati and started at Cincinnati Children’s in 2012. His research focus includes evaluation of home visiting, DNA methylation, and child development.
John S. Hutton, MD
Dr. Hutton is a pediatrician and assistant professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He graduated with honors from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and completed pediatric residency and a National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. His research focus is to better understand the role of home reading environment and interventions on emergent literacy (the skills and attitudes preparing a child for reading), early brain development supporting this process, and screening skills and risk factors in primary care settings.
James L. Puegh, PhD
Dr. Peugh is an Associate Professor in the Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology at CCHMC. Dr. Peugh was trained in cross-sectional and longitudinal univariate and multivariate data analytic techniques and has specialized training in missing data handling and dyadic data analysis from the University of Nebraska. As a former member of the faculty at the University of Virginia, Dr. Peugh taught advanced longitudinal data analysis techniques and began publishing Monte Carlo simulation manuscripts. As a quantitative psychologist, Dr. Peugh assists faculty members, post-doctoral fellows, O’Grady residents, and graduate students in their grant submission and research publication efforts. He has worked with ECS on the MIDIS, MIDIS2, and Family Foundations studies. In addition, Dr. Peugh has continued to publish his own research along two lines: (1) using Monte Carlo simulation techniques to test the accuracy of longitudinal, cross-sectional, and multi-level mixture models, and (2) writing pedagogical “how-to” manuscripts that detail pertinent issues and proper procedures for analyzing mixture, multilevel, dyadic, and count data models.
Staff
Jennifer Berndsen
Jenny is the Program Manager for the Every Child Succeeds Program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where she started as a home visitor in 2005. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from The University of Cincinnati and is a licensed social worker in the state of Ohio. Jenny provides technical and clinical support as the liaison between the Every Child Succeeds central office and the 8 home visitation provider agencies who provide home visiting services in Ohio and Kentucky. Additionally, Jenny trains on Domestic Violence and is certified in Trauma-Responsive Care.
Cassandra M. Fetters, MA, CCRP
Cassandra is a Senior Clinical Research Coordinator who started at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in 2010. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University and a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Dayton. She is currently the project manager for the PRIDE and ECS Biobank studies.
Beth Heeter
Beth is a Clinical Research Coordinator who started at Cincinnati Children’s in 2014. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Northern Kentucky University. Prior to joining the research team in 2019, Beth was an Every Child Succeeds home visitor for nine years serving families in Early Head Start, Start Strong Avondale, and Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health. Currently, Beth is working on the PRIDE and ECS Biobank studies.
Jasmine Ross
Jasmine is a Clinical Research Coordinator who started at Cincinnati Children’s in January 2022. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Northern Kentucky University and a Master’s degree from Clark Atlanta University. Prior to joining the research team in January 2022, Jasmine was a foster care home visitor at Necco for 6 years. Currently Jasmine is working on PRIDE and ECS Biobank studies.