Tama Leventhal

Education: Ph.D., Columbia University Expertise: Neighborhood and community context; housing context; family context; poverty and socioeconomic status; social policy; adolescence; immigrant young children

Expertise: Neighborhood and community context; housing context; family context; poverty and socioeconomic status; social policy; adolescence; immigrant young children

Email: Tama.Leventhal@tufts.edu

My research is at the intersection of child development and social policy. My primary line of research focuses on the role of neighborhood contexts in the lives of children, youth, and families. In this work, I examine whether the neighborhoods where children and youth live matter for their development, for whom they matter most, when they matter most for child development, and how they might matter. Another related line of research, addressing similar issues, centers on housing and residential mobility.

I have been a Co-Investigator on most of the leading experimental and non-experimental neighborhood studies including the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration (MTO), the Yonkers Family and Community Project, and the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). I was an Adolescence Investigator for Phase IV of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which followed this birth cohort through 15 years of age, and am one of several investigators continuing to follow this cohort into their early 20s. Most recently, I am co-directing the Housing and Children’s Healthy Development Study (HCHD Study), a new data collection effort to understand how housing and the interrelated contexts of neighborhoods, schools, and families contribute to the children’s development.

I was formerly a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Postdoctoral Urban Scholar and a William T. Grant Scholar and am currently a Foundation for Child Development Changing Faces of America’s Children Young Scholar.

I currently serve on the boards of the University-Based Child and Family Policy Consortium and the Council on Contemporary Families.