Monica Oxford MSW, PhD

Monica Oxford, Ph.D. is a research professor in the Department of Family and Child Nursing, the Executive Director of the Barnard Center for Infant Mental Health and Director of Parent-Child Relationship Programs. Dr. Oxford’s research focuses on birth to five Parent-Child relationship quality and how that dyadic relationship impacts child developmental outcomes for vulnerable families living in challenging environments. Dr. Oxford’s interest is in how context, parenting, and child characteristics combine to inform patterns of child outcomes and how intervention services promote both parent and child well-being. As the director of Barnard Center, she is also involved in training providers (home visitors, nurses, social workers, child care professionals) about infant mental health and how parenting behaviors and context operate to support or detract from healthy outcomes. Dr. Oxford is principal investigator of four NIH grants; three are aimed at examining the impact of a relationship-based intervention program, Promoting First Relationships® (Kelly et al, 2008) in three populations: one for parents involved with child protective services and the second for American Indian families in a rural setting, and the third for parents who have recently been reunified with their child after a foster care placement. The fourth grant is aimed at addressing the interaction between family, school, child, and contextual risk such as poverty and early child developmental outcomes Dr. Oxford is also co-principal investigator on four NIH funded grants testing the effectiveness of intervention programs for vulnerable populations.

 

Education

• BS, Arizona State University, 1990
• MSW, University of Washington, 1995
• PhD, University of Washington, 2000

What do you love about the UW School of Nursing?

The UW SON faculty and staff have entrepreneurial spirit, many seek to develop, test, and then disseminate innovative interventions and programs to support families and their children. I think this spirit is unique to SON, it’s exciting to be a part of a “Bench-to-Bedside” approach in research and practice.

Department

Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing

Research Areas

• Innovative Interventions
• Lifespan Health

Research Centers

• Barnard Center for Infant Mental Health and Development