Sara F. Stein

I study mechanisms of transmission of the effects of trauma (i.e. intergenerational trauma) from mother to child prenatally, postnatally, and when women are parenting young children, with the long-term goal of reducing intergenerational transmission by improving interventions for trauma-exposed women and families. My work has addressed: 1) how trauma impacts women’s physical and mental health, as well as parenting during sensitive periods for intergenerational transmission; and 2) community-based, trauma-informed intervention research and translation, most notably with traumatized mothers of color. My program of research applies theory and clinically-informed observations to examine mechanisms of intergenerational trauma among trauma-exposed samples using sophisticated methodologies (i.e. longitudinal multilevel, latent growth curve, and structural equation modeling) and centering marginalizing and discriminatory structural factors.