Colleen Huebner has been a member of the faculty since 1996 and serves as Program Director of the Maternal and Child Health Track, (MPH program). Her research and teaching expertise integrate three overlapping areas in public health and child development. They are: (1) the development of language and emotion regulation and the constitutional and social factors that can influence these processes; (2) parent-child interaction and family functioning during first five years of life; and (3) the design and evaluation of appropriate interventions for children and families at-risk for poor outcomes due to experiential or environmental factors including poverty, low parental education or maternal mental illness. Dr. Huebner is an affiliate member of the faculty of the School of Dentistry and of the School of Nursing where she is a member of the advisory board of the Center for Infant Mental Health and Development. In 2003, Dr. Huebner was appointed by President Bush to the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. She is also a Research Associate with the Center for Human Development & Disability and the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences
Research Interests:
Design, delivery and evaluation of preventive interventions with young children and families; social bases of language, cognitive and emotional development in normal and at-risk children. Language and literacy development; parents' health literacy.
Healthy Steps for Young Children in HMO
This project,with Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, evaluates a program of expanded prenatal and pediatric health services for families with young children (birth to age 3 years). This project is part of the National Health Steps for Young Children study; it is unique in adding a prenatal component to the national, multi-state project.
http://www.healthysteps.org/
Learning Links I: A county-based approach to support young children
The purpose of Learning Links is to translate findings from experimental research to create a series of developmentally-timed, community-based interventions that support children's progress toward school readiness over the years of 2 to 5. Current research evaluates 3 different modes of delivering information to parents about how to promote early language development through shared reading. The study is supported by funding from the University of Washington's Center on Mind, Brain and Learning. http://www.healthysteps.org/
Selected Publications
Huebner CE, Meltzoff AN. A randomized comparison of instructional method on parent-child reading style [accepted 1/05, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology].
Bell JA**, Zimmerman FJ, Huebner CE, Cawthon ML, Ward DH, Schroeder CA. Perinatal health service use by women released from jail. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2004;15(3):426-442.
Huebner, CE, Dunlop M, Case, A. Containing violence: A case study illustration of Bion's container/contained model as applied to mother-infant intervention. Clinical Social Work Journal 2004;32(2):141-157.
Huebner CE, Barlow WE, Tyll LT, Johnston BD, Thompson RS. Expanding developmental and behavioral services for newborns in primary care; Program design, delivery, and evaluation framework. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 2004;26(4):344-355.
Huebner CE. Evaluation of a parent education program to reduce the risk of infant and toddler maltreatment. Public Health Nursing 2002;19(5):377-389.