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Sam Fahmy
Director of Communications
School of Public Health
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ATLANTA—School of Public Health alumna Kate Guastaferro (MPH ’11, Ph.D. ’16) will kick off the 2024 – 2025 Grand Rounds Lecture Series with a talk titled “Maximizing Impact: Expanding the Reach of Child Maltreatment Prevention Interventions.”
Guastaferro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New York University School of Global Public Health. She will deliver her Grand Rounds Lecture on August 28 from noon – 1 p.m. in the Student Center Speaker’s Auditorium. The event is free and open to students, faculty, staff and the public, but registration is required.
“It is wonderful to be able to welcome back one of our own alumni,” said Jalayne Arias, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences and chair of the Grand Rounds Lecture committee. “Kate was well-known and respected while she was a student at GSU. After graduation, her research career has made a significant impact on child maltreatment and public health.”
Guastaferro, who holds a secondary appointment in NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, has devoted her work to the development and optimization of interventions with high public health impact. She is an expert in the multiphase optimization strategy, and her expertise is in parent-focused multicomponent behavioral interventions to prevent child maltreatment.
Guastaferro co-led a statewide trial focused on the coordinated implementation of three evidence-base child sexual abuse prevention programs; included in this trial was the parent-focused child sexual abuse program that she developed, piloted and evaluated. Her current work is focused on the integration of intervention optimization into the prevention of child maltreatment.
Prior to joining NYU, Guastaferro was an assistant research professor in human development and family studies at the Pennsylvania State University, and an affiliate of its Prevention Research Center and Child Maltreatment Solutions Network. In 2020, she was awarded the Victoria S. Levin Award for Early Career Success in Young Children’s Mental Health Research from the Society for Research in Child Development. She has been published in Child Maltreatment, Translational Behavioral Medicine, and the American Journal of Public Health. In 2016 she received the Ph.D. Public Health Achievement Award from Georgia State University in recognition of her academic and practical successes.
In addition to her Ph.D. and MPH from the GSU SPH, Guastaferro earned a BA in anthropology from Boston University. She completed a year of postdoctoral training at the Pennsylvania State University.
Sponsored by the School of Public Health and organized by a committee led by Jalayne Arias, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences, the Grand Rounds Lecture Series brings nationally recognized thought leaders to the Georgia State University School of Public Health for dialogues that contribute to the school’s mission of advancing health equity and solving contemporary and emerging health issues. To register and learn more, visit publichealth.gsu.edu/grandrounds/.
In addition to Arias, members of the Grand Rounds Committee are:
- April Ballard, Assistant Professor, Department of Population Health Sciences
- Marcus Cooper, Facilities and Events Specialist
- Sam Fahmy, Director of Communications
- Harry Heiman, Clinical Professor, Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences, and Director, DrPH Program
- Kevin Maloney, Assistant Professor, Department of Population Health Sciences
- Margaret Manchester, Research Coordinator
- Anne Marie Schipani-McLaughlin, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences
- Lucy Popova, Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences
- Claire Spears, Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences
- Christine Stauber, Professor, Department of Population Health Sciences
- Daniel Whitaker, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences, and Associate Dean for Research