Dr. Rachel Katz received her Ph.D. in Child Study and Human Development from Tufts University in 2018. For six years, she served as a doctoral research assistant for the Massachusetts Healthy Families Evaluation on the longitudinal follow-up study of mothers and children (MHFE-2EC). At Tufts, Dr. Katz studied the influence of early experiences on development, including how development can be impacted by factors such as early childhood education, home visiting experiences, caregiver-child relationships, and adversity. Supported by a Doris Duke Dissertation Fellowship for the Promotion of Child Well-Being, her dissertation investigated patterns of child care use over time, associations between early child care participation and child outcomes in early childhood, and the mechanisms by which child care fosters positive development in a sample of adolescent mothers and their children.
Dr. Katz is currently the Research Specialist for the Educare Learning Network at the Ounce of Prevention Fund. Prior to joining the Ounce, she was a Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) State Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in the Division of Early Intervention. Working for the state, she used her research and early childhood expertise to inform practice and policy initiatives and to support and develop the agency’s research activities and evaluation processes. Dr. Katz received a BA in Psychology from Bates College in 2008. Get in touch with Rachel here!