Having received her PhD in our department in 2021 for her study titled, “Armed Conflict, Intimate Partner Violence and Women’s Mental Health: An Explanatory Mixed-Methods Study.” She will continue her work with the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood as well as teach a course on Global Health in the Program in Applied Public Health Sciences.

Currently, Dr. Restrepo is working on building a surveillance system for Adverse and Positive Childhood Experiences in Connecticut using publicly available and administrative data sources. Data from this system will be used to  identify child populations at higher risk of adverse childhood experiences and gaps in the provision of prevention programs. She expects data from this system will be available to the public through a web portal in 2023. She is also collaborating with colleagues from Colombia and Puerto Rico on a project to understand better the role of potentially traumatic experiences in children’s mental health in socio-politically complex contexts.  Dr. Restrepo’s goal is to advance her research in preventing adverse experiences in childhood by focusing on factors that have been found to promote positive health outcomes despite adversity.