People

Dr. Gaither is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (General Pediatrics) and Public Health (Chronic Disease Epidemiology). She obtained her doctorate in epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health in 2015. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship in bioinformatics, she joined the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics. Her research focuses on the impact of the opioid crisis on vulnerable populations, work she began more than a decade ago as part of her dissertation research, for which she received a National Research Service Award from the NIH to study the association between opioid prescribing practices and all-cause mortality among U.S. veterans. In 2015, she began working on a project that allowed her to bridge her interests in adult medicine with that of pediatrics, which resulted in the first national publication to examine hospitalizations for opioid poisonings in children. She followed this work with the first national study to examine pediatric deaths from opioids. Prior to these publications, most of what was known about opioid-related morbidity and mortality came from the adult overdose literature. To date, she has published 56 papers in peer-reviewed journals and her research has been supported by awards from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the Patterson Trust, the Hood Foundation, and most recently, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Dr. Linda Mayes is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology and Director of the Yale Child Study Center. She is also Special Advisor to the Dean in the Yale School of Medicine. Trained as a pediatrician, Dr. Mayes’s research focuses on stress-response and regulatory mechanisms in young children at both biological and psychosocial risk. She has especially focused on the impact of prenatal substance use on children’s long-term outcomes. She has made contributions to understanding the mechanisms of effect of prenatal stimulant exposure on the ontogeny of arousal regulatory systems and the relation between dysfunctional emotional regulation and impaired prefrontal cortical function in young children. She has published widely in the developmental psychology, pediatrics, and child psychiatry literature. Given the nature of her work with children at significantly high-risk for developmental impairments from both biological and psychosocial etiologies, Dr. Mayes also focuses on the impact of parenting on the development of arousal and attention regulatory mechanisms in their children, and specifically on how substance abuse impacts reward and stress regulatory systems in new parents. With other colleagues in the Center, she studies how adults transition to parenthood, especially when substance abuse is involved, and the basic neural circuitry of early parent-infant attachment using both neuroimaging and electroencephalographic techniques. She and her colleagues have developed a series of interventions for parents including an intensive home-based program called Minding the Baby. Dr. Mayes's research programs are multidisciplinary, not only in their blending basic science with clinical interventions but also in the disciplines required including adult and child psychiatry, behavioral neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, and neuropsychology. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor in psychology at Sewanee: The University of the South where she is working on intervention programs to enhance child and family resilience.

Dr. Deepa Camenga is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Section of Research at Yale. She is a Physician-Scientist who is board certified in pediatrics and addiction medicine with expertise in adolescent addiction. Her research aims to improve the identification and treatment of substance use and substance use disorders among youth in pediatric settings. She is also the Associate Director for Pediatric Programs for the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine. In this role, she is one of a very few clinicians in the state that prescribes medication treatment for adolescents with opioid use disorder. She also leads an innovative addiction medicine tele-consult service for local school-based health centers and treats adolescents and young adults at the APT Foundation. In 2017, Dr. Camenga was elected to serve on a national American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Substance Use and Prevention, tasked with protecting and improving the health and well-being of children and adolescents throughout the country.Dr. Camenga completed her medical education and residency training at the University of Rochester, NY. Dr. Camenga completed a fellowship in health services research through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at Yale.

Dr. Shabanova is a faculty member in the department of Pediatrics and Department of Biostatistics at Yale University. Prior to that she was one of the senior biostatisticians at the Yale Center for Analytical Sciences (YCAS). With over 20 years of experience as a researcher and statistician in academia and industry, she acquired expertise in statistical and epidemiological methods related to a variety of studies, including development of testable hypotheses, selection of study designs, randomization algorithms, and analytical considerations that correspond to particular study designs. Her statistical expertise are in survival and multi-level/longitudinal techniques. Dr. Shabanova's work has primarily been focused on collaborations with other researchers, including physicians and academicians, in the field of maternal and child health at Yale.

Matthew Grossman M.D. graduated from SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine in 2003 and completed his pediatric residency at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital (YNHCH) in 2006.  He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine and a pediatric hospitalist.He has been the quality and safety officer for YNHCH since 2013 and his team was awarded both the 2015 and 2017 National Pediatric Quality Award form the Children’s Hospital Association.

Medical Director, Pediatric Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) Program Chairperson, Yale Traffic Safety SubcommitteeCo-Chairperson, State of Connecticut Child Fatality Review PanelPrincipal Investigator, Injury Free Coalition for Kids at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital

Dr. Xiao Xu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine, and a faculty member of Yale Cancer Center and Yale Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research Center (COPPER). As a health economist and health services researcher, her work seeks to promote the delivery of high-quality and high-value care. Her research focuses on examining and identifying factors that influence the quality, outcomes, and value of care, with a focus on women's health care. Her recent studies examined hospital and geographic variation in care utilization, costs, and patient outcomes; comparative effectiveness and cost effectiveness of alternative treatment strategies; and gender and racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. Dr. Xu is also actively involved in the teaching of medical students, clinical residents/fellows, and postgraduate/postdoctoral fellows. She mentors trainees on research design and methodology, and lectures on methods of data collection, data analysis, and cost effectiveness evaluation. Dr. Xu has served as a principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and various research foundations. She received honorable mention for the Aetna Susan B. Anthony Award for excellence in research on older women and public health from the American Public Health Association (Gerontological Health Section) in 2005, the Frank J. McDevitt Excellence in Research Award in Policy Research from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation in 2008 and 2011, and the Carol Weisman & Gary Chase Gender-Based Research Award from the AcademyHealth in 2017. Dr. Xu is a member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, AcademyHealth, the International Health Economics Association, and the Gerontological Society of America.