Postdoctoral Research Associate, Youth-Nex

The University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development's Center to Promote Effective Youth Development (Youth-Nex) is seeking highly qualified applicants for a one-year Postdoctoral Research Associate position, with the possibility of extension up to three years based on an annual basis dependent upon satisfactory performance and the availability of funding. This position is part of the Preventive Interventions Team: Collaborative Research on Engagement and Wellbeing (PIT-CREW), which conducts research related to promoting effective youth development, intervention, and programming, including preventing behavioral and mental health problems in schools.

The candidate will be asked to support implementation of projects in conjunction with the National Center for Rural School Mental Health (NCRSMH)¸which is a multi-year year grant funded by the Institute of Education Sciences focused on building partnerships between researchers, clinicians, and rural schools to conduct research that improves mental and behavioral health outcomes for rural young people. Faculty affiliated with the NCRSMH currently lead projects related to mental health screening, needs assessment, intervention adaptation, training, and implementation of school mental health prevention and early intervention services. Partner schools for this project are located in Virginia.

Mentorship will be provided by senior colleagues Drs. Catherine Bradshaw, Amanda Nguyen, and Mike Lyons. This particular position is funded by the UVA Precision Health Grand Challenge Initiative, with a focus on improving outcomes and reducing disparities for communities and populations related to youth mental health, consistent with the UVA 2030 Plan’s focus on precision health for populations. Candidates will receive mentorship and training in precision health, including youth mental health screening, advanced statistical methods to analyzing screening data, decision support to implement mental health interventions, longitudinal data analysis, integrative data analysis, and related grant writing.

Responsibilities:

• Analyzing data collected through the implementation of the Coping Power Rural Program, E-IMPACTS Project, Double Check online program, the mental health screening of students, and related evidence-based programs within the National Center for Rural School Mental Health.

• Support coaching of teachers in the implementation of the evidence-based programs, collection of data, and assessment of program impact.   

• Run advanced quantitative analyses using software such as Stata, R, Mplus, HLM, and/or SPSS.

• Generate research questions for analysis utilizing quantitative data collected from prior trials of prevention programs and frameworks like PBIS, Double Check, Coping Power, MTSS-B, and the E-IMPACTS/ECHO model.

• Lead and co-author papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals.

• Communicate research findings at key conferences (e.g., Society for Prevention Research, Society for Research in Child Development, American Association for Public Health, Society for Research on Adolescence, etc.).

• Contribute to submission of federal and private grant proposals including to funders (e.g., current and prior funders include I