Jim Cook, PhD

My area of research is community psychology, which focuses on changing systems and settings to better meet the needs of individuals and families. With a strong emphasis on community-based participatory research (CBPR), my faculty and student colleagues and I work with community groups as partners. We work together to develop research questions, collect data, and use the knowledge gained to improve the community. Examples of current partnerships (with Ryan Kilmer) include: evaluation of a major children's mental health initiative; evaluation of family support programs within both mental health and child protective services (CPS); pilot efforts to improve social workers’ ability to identify and meet the mental health needs of youth in CPS; evaluating efforts to increase school readiness and skills for young children. Through working with these programs to evaluate their impact, we help them improve their ability to help children and families. For more information