Kate Guastaferro

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Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Co-Director of the Center for the Advancement and Dissemination of Intervention Optimization

Director of the Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) Program

Kate Guastaferro, PhD is an intervention scientist by training, her work is devoted to the development, optimization, implementation and evaluation of effective, efficient, affordable and scalable interventions with high public health impact. She is an expert in the multiphase optimization (MOST) strategy and her expertise is in parent-focused, multicomponent behavioral interventions to prevent child maltreatment. Dr. 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, Dr. 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.

Dr. Guastaferro received her PhD and MPH from Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, and her BA in anthropology from Boston University. She also completed a year of postdoctoral training at the Pennsylvania State University.

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow, Prevention and Methodology Training Program (T32 DA017629), The Pennsylvania State University

PhD Public Health, Georgia State University

MPH Health Promotion, Georgia State University

BA Anthropology, Boston University

Honors and awards

Victoria S. Levin Award, Society for Research on Child Development (2020)

NIH Loan Repayment Program Award: Toward the Optimization of Behavioral Interventions to Prevent Child Maltreatment (201820192020)

Public Health Achievement Award, Georgia State University (2016)

Scarlet Key Honor Society, Boston University (2008)

Publications

Drug court as an intervention point to affect the well-being of families of parents with substance use disorders

Engagement in home visiting services during the transition from pregnancy to postpartum: A prospective mixed methods pilot study

Engagement in home visiting: An overview of the problem and how a coalition of researchers worked to address this cross-model concern

From ideas to interventions: A review of frameworks for designing and optimizing health-related behavioral interventions.

Introduction to the Multiphase Optimization Strategy for Behavioral Intervention Research.

Iterative optimization and decision-making using the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) to optimize an online behavioral intervention.

itMatters: Optimization of an online intervention to prevent sexually transmitted infections in college students

Lessons learned recruiting and retaining first-year college students in an evaluation of an online STI prevention intervention.

Mental health research agenda-setting paper

Optimizing Multicomponent Interventions: The Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST).

Parent-focused child sexual abuse prevention: An additive approach.

Guastaferro, K. (n.d.).

Publication year

2020

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