Lauren Stargel

Lauren Stargel received her Ph.D. in Child Study and Human Development from Tufts University in 2020. She is currently the Berger Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kempe Center for the Prevention & Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Prior to her time at Tufts, Lauren worked for several organizations working to bridge the gap between research and practice for evidence-based programs to support the health and well-being of children and families. During her doctoral training, she worked at TIER on the Massachusetts Healthy Families Evaluation (MHFE-2EC) project, a longitudinal evaluation of a home visiting program for young mothers, and on the SAFE Child Communities project, a statewide maltreatment prevention initiative. Her research interests focus broadly on parenting, early childhood development, adversity through a risk and resilience framework, and children’s behavioral and emotional regulation. In her postdoctoral research, she continues to work to better understand parenting within the context of adversity. Her research focuses on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), maltreatment, and the intergenerational impacts of adversity among young mothers with young children. Further, her work focuses on identifying potentially modifiable pathways, such as protective factors, to support children’s emotion regulation and long-term mental health and inform effective parenting supports for young mothers. Lastly, she is interested in better understanding physiological indices of maternal parenting and emotion regulation, particularly when they have histories of adversity and trauma.