Alexander Reid (PhD ’18) was recently promoted and tenured as associate professor of Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies at Cal State Bakersfield. Congratulations Alex!

HDFS faculty featured in UConn’s report State of Impact! Specifically, Marlene Schwartz’s project in East Hartford schools to promote child health and wellbeing, and Rachel Chazan Cohen and Caitlin Lombardi’s work with CT child care centers and family child care homes were both highlighted in the report. Read the full report here, and find HDFS […]

HDFS Alum Ciara Collins (PhD ’23) is now a research scientist at the Institute for Policy and Governance at Virginia Tech. Congratulations Ciara!

Qianxia Jiang (PhD ’22) was recently highlighted in an article by her university, University of Central Florida, about her work on healthy lifestyles. https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucf-health-sciences-researcher-embraces-florida-as-her-living-lab/ 

Antonia Caba completed her PhD in Fall 2024. She earned her bachelor’s degree in public health from Miami University in 2018 and her master’s in public health from Yale School of Public Health in 2020. In her time at UConn, Antonia worked on quantitative and qualitative research projects related to the determinants of health and […]

Lauren Lafferty graduated with a BS in HDFS in 2005. During her time at UConn she led the HDFS student government, was named a New England Scholar, presented a thesis as an undergraduate and was later awarded an outstanding women’s award from the UConn Alumni Foundation. Lauren credits her HDFS degree as the bedrock for […]

Anne Bladen has spent her career supporting families, children and students. After earning her BA in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College, she worked as a bilingual Welfare Caseworker in Willimantic, CT, during a time period marked by the AIDS crisis, opioid epidemic, and severe cuts to social programs. Seeing the challenges her clients faced, Anne […]

The New York Times interviewed Rebecca Puhl for their article “New Obesity Definition Challenges Current Use of BMI”. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/health/bmi-obesity-definition.html

The Child Labs community participated in CT Children’s Medical Center’s Pajama Day on Friday December 13th. Children, college students and staff wore pjs to school and made donations to CCMC to support children experiencing extended hospital stays. The Child Labs community raised more than $200!

Charlie Super learned early in life that people in different places behave differently. He grew up in suburban New Jersey, but spent many summers with his mother’s parents in rural Georgia. His father, though American-born, grew up in Europe; Charlie had his own taste of Europe as a teenager, when the family spent a year in […]