Leonard and Helen Stulman Professor in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD
Deborah Gross is the Leonard and Helen Stulman Professor in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Mental Health. Her research focuses on developing effective interventions for promoting positive parenting and child mental health in the first five years of life. She and her colleagues worked with an economically and ethnically diverse parent advisory board to develop an innovative parenting program called the Chicago Parent Program. Tested in a NIH-funded trial, this program led to substantial improvements in parenting and reductions and child behavior problems up to 1 year later. The Chicago Parent Program is now being used across the country by clinicians and researchers working with families with young children. Dr. Gross has published extensively in the areas of parenting, early childhood mental health, and methodological issues related to clinical research. In 2008, she received the President's Award from the Friends of the National Institute for Nursing Research and was named an Edge Runner by the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Gross has served on numerous NIH and IOM review groups and expert panels. Dr. Gross is a member of the editorial boards of Research in Nursing & Health and Nursing Outlook and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Her current research focuses on the cost-effectiveness of innovative strategies for improving parent participation rates in prevention programs designed to reduce child behavior problems and on the effectiveness of the Chicago Parent Program as a treatment for behavior disorders in young children living in low-income urban communities. Findings from these studies are designed to inform health policy on cost-effective strategies for improving the health and wellbeing of young children and their families.