Monica Oxford, PhD

Monica Oxford, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in the Department of Family and Child Nursing and the Executive Director of Parent-Child Relationship Programs. Dr. Oxford’s research focuses on early parenting and child developmental outcomes for vulnerable families living in challenging environments. Dr. Oxford’s interest is in how context, parenting, and child characteristics combine to inform particular patterns of child outcomes and how intervention services promote both parent and child wellbeing. Dr. Oxford is also involved in training social service providers throughout Washington about infant mental health and how parenting behaviors and context operate to support or detract from healthy outcomes. Dr. Oxford is principal investigator of three NIH grants; the first two are aimed at examining the impact of a relationship based intervention program, Promoting First Relationships® (Kelly et al, 2008) in two populations: one for parents involved with child protective services and the second for American Indian families in a rural setting. The third grant is aimed at addressing the interaction between family, school, child, and contextual risk such as poverty and early child developmental outcomes Dr. Oxford is also co-principal investigator on three NIH funded grants testing the effectiveness of intervention programs for vulnerable populations.