Dr. Schaeffer received her doctorate in child-clinical psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Prevention Science at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on understanding the developmental trajectories that lead to juvenile offending and adolescent substance abuse, and developing multisystemic (i.e., family, peer, school, community) interventions to address these problems. She currently serves as a Co-Principal Investigator on a NIDA-funded clinical trial adapting Multisystemic Therapy (MST) for families in which there is substantiated child abuse or neglect and caregiver substance abuse. Dr. Schaeffer also is developing and evaluating an ecologically-based intervention aimed at improving the relationships of youth at-risk for serious antisocial behavior with prosocial peers, and exploring how to incorporate technology into behavioral/systemic interventions (e.g., MST for juvenile offending, Reinforcement-Based Treatment for substance abuse) to enhance client outcomes. |
Cindy M. Schaeffer, Ph.D.