Institute of Child Development

Child Wellbeing Research Group

People

Principal Investigator

Canan Karatekin is an associate professor at the Institute of Child Development. She has a BA in Psychology from Harvard College, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA. She studied cognitive impairments in children with youth-onset psychosis or ADHD for many years. However, in 5/2011, she decided to shift her research focus to the child welfare system and later broadened her area to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In recent years, she has broadened her interests even more, to social and structural determinants of health and health inequities as they related to ACEs and other dimensions of children's wellbeing.

Freddie Corcoran

Frederique (Freddie) Corcoran is a 5th year Developmental Psychology PhD Candidate at the Institute of Child Development. Her research interests focus on multi-system resilience in children affected by adversity, and other racial, ethnic and income inequities (e.g., parental incarceration, homelessness, foster care). Specifically, she is interested in the intersection between mass incarceration and child development, including resources, programs and policies that have public health effects for families affected by incarceration.

Rachel Kritzik

Rachel Kritzik is a fourth-year Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Science student at the Institute of Child Development. Her research interests generally concern how policies and structures affect child health and wellbeing within a social determinants of health framework. Her interests span understanding the long term effects of early childhood education, supporting children involved in the child welfare system, and preventing child firearm mortality.

Others in the research group include...

Unnati Khanna, an MA student in clinical psychology, and Shruti Chakraborty, who has gained her Master's degree in Applied Psychology at the University of Delhi, join us every week by Zoom from India. Samantha Daddi and Rosa Gerdts are post-bacs volunteering in the group. Undergraduates include Maya Fteiha, Arianna Hawkins, Ashley Aker, Ava Roeder, Maddie Mason, Paige Linssen, and Hayley Cox. We also have a long-standing collaboration with Dr. Susan Mason in the School of Public Health and Dr. Andrew Barnes in the Department of Pediatrics. We are also currently collaborating with Dr. Angie Fertig on a case study of the passage of the Child Tax Credit in Minnesota.