Dr. Monica Fitzgerald is a licensed clinical psychologist and Senior Research Associate in the Prevention Science Program at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science. Monica directs the Center for Resilience + Well-Being (CRW). Her expertise and research focus on the impact of child abuse, violence, and trauma on children’s emotional and behavioral well-being and the powerful role that supportive caregivers and adults have in buffering the impacts of stress, adversity, and trauma for youth. Adults are critical in creating safe, supportive environments and socializing children’s emotion management skills and healthy coping. Therefore, adults’ well-being is an important ingredient in supporting youth and CRW is committed to designing and testing programs and practices that bolster adult well-being and resilience so that adults can show up in healthy ways to support youth.
Dr. Fitzgerald has expertise designing, implementing, and evaluating trauma-informed, evidence-based family and school-based prevention programs/interventions for youth and families impacted by trauma. She is a certified expert trainer and consultant in the trauma-focused interventions (TF-CBT, AF-CBT) and she is co-developer of a prevention program for families, Let’s Connect®, which is currently being evaluated with families in our communities through our Community Collective for Youth + Family Resilience efforts (CCYFR-ACF; CCYFR-OJJDP). These community-based partnerships focus on promoting resilience for youth and families through evidenced-based interventions that promote protective factors and reduce risk. The aim is to reduce health disparities for underserved youth ages 3-17 impacted by violence in our community.
Dr. Fitzgerald and her CRW team also supports our community based mental health center, Mental Health Partners, through a SAMHSA NCTSN grant, to implement trauma informed prevention programs and interventions (TF-CBT, AF-CBT, LC) in their service sites (Boulder, Broomfield, Lafayette, Longmont, and Nederland).
With regard to school focused work, Dr. Fitzgerald is co-developer of the trauma-informed school prevention program RISE: Resilience in Schools & Educators, which is being evaluated in Colorado schools. She and her CRW team also collaborate closely with the Colorado Department of Education’s initiatives to promote safe, supportive environments and health and well-being in schools. Dr. Fitzgerald serves Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on several local, state, and federal grants.
CRW’s work is grounded in clinical, developmental, and implementation science as well as a community-based participatory research approach.
Dr. Fitzgerald obtained her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Georgia and completed a clinical internship and NIMH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Child Traumatic Stress studies from the National Crime Victims Research Treatment Center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. Monica loves being a parent of three and enjoys rock climbing, mountain biking, and skiing at home in Colorado.