Elizabeth Stormshak

Elizabeth Stormshak

Elizabeth Stormshak, Ph.D. is a Knight Chair and professor at the University of Oregon. Her research interests span the fields of both education and prevention science, including family-centered prevention of problem behavior, mental health distress, and substance use in children and youths. Her focus is on understanding risk and protective factors throughout the lifespan that predict problem behavior or healthy adjustment.  Her intervention research has primarily targeted families, with a focus on enhancing parenting skills and family relationships to reduce later mental health challenges.  Her research in strength-based and tailored to individual families. She focuses on working with families in the context of their cultural values, strengths, and goals for the future.  She is one of the developers of the Family Check-Up intervention model, and has worked to implement the model in community settings throughout her career. She has been engaged in funded research since the start of her career at the University of Oregon in 1996.  Her work has been funded by multiple federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Education.  Her primary focus has been on conducting clinical trials to test the efficacy of the Family Check-Up intervention with underserved children and families, and she has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles on this topic.  Her recent work on the adaptation of the family check-up to an online platform has potential for wide-scale implementation in schools and community systems, and suggests that a brief, online program can reduce risk factors in the home and promote positive parenting skills which are linked to later improvements in mental health and wellness for youth.  As a faculty member at the University of Oregon, she has served as the director of the Prevention Science Institute, Department Head, and Associate Vice President for Research.   She also served on the board of the Society for Prevention Research (SPR).  She has been awarded several national and local awards, including the Translational Science and Fellow award from the Society for Prevention Research, the Philip H. Knight endowed chair at the University of Oregon, and the Innovation award at the University of Oregon. Dr. Stormshak earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Penn State University.