Dr. Dara Blachman-Demner joined OBSSR in January, 2017. She is focused on efforts to facilitate the adoption of behavioral and social science findings into health research and practice. She has expertise in developmental psychopathology; prevention and intervention research at multiple levels of the social ecology; community based participatory research; and dissemination and implementation science.
Prior to joining OBSSR, she served as a Social Science Analyst at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) for six years where she initiated and oversaw portfolios related to the impact of youth violence and victimization experiences on health outcomes. She coordinated portfolios on teen dating violence, bullying, child maltreatment and children exposed to intimate partner violence. Research grants included descriptive, etiological, preventive, intervention and policy research as well as research on methodologies and measurement development. While at NIJ she also oversaw large scale program evaluations including of the Attorney General’s Defending Childhood Demonstration Site Initiative and the Office for Victims of Crime Linking Systems of Care for Youth state demonstration project. Finally, she facilitated the development of a small research portfolio on implementation science and understanding the use of research evidence among practitioners and policy makers.
Prior to NIJ, Dr. Blachman-Demner served as the Coordinator of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a collaboration of 22 Federal agencies that produce or use data related to children and families. In this role she oversaw the annual production of the seminal America’s Children report that provides a regular summary of indicators of child well-being and monitors changes in these indicators over time. Dr. Blachman-Demner began her Federal career as a Society for Research in Child Development/AAAS policy fellow at OBSSR. During her fellowship, she coordinated the first annual trans-NIH conference on Dissemination and Implementation Science.
A licensed psychologist, Dr. Blachman-Demner received her BA from Duke University and her Ph.D. in clinical/community psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her clinical internship at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois, Chicago and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Family Institute/School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.
Involvement with AcademyHealth:
- Committee Member: 2017 D&I Conference
- Committee Member: National Health Policy Orientation