Julie Cederbaum is an associate professor in the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Her work focuses on the impact of childhood adversity and family processes on the well-being of  youth. Using a dyad and family systems lens, her research explores the strengths and challenges experienced by diverse families, and ways in which parenting processes and behaviors (i.e. parent–child communication, parental monitoring, parent–child relationship, and parental role modeling) and positively influence mental health, reproductive health, and substance use behaviors in children, adolescents and young adults.

In collaboration with Children’s Institute, Inc, Cederbaum is evaluating a group-based intervention to explore ways in which knowledge and skill-building strengthen father-child and father-partner relationships. This longitudinal intervention work is funded by a grant from the Administration of Children and Families. Cederbaum is also a 2023 recipient of the SC CTSI Pilot Funding Program. This work will use a sequential mixed-methods design to examine the experiences of transitional age youth in foster care (TAYFC) with the goal of understanding the profiles of TAY who are currently participating or have participated in the independent living services programs, the benefits of service engagement and remaining perceived needs of TAYFC who participate in the program, and the desire or need for a more structured intervention to meet goals. 

Other projects are focused on pregnancy and parenting, behavioral outcomes for teen mothers and their children, parenting and behavioral outcomes among adolescents of HIV-affected families, partner and parenting relationships in military families, experiences of child-welfare involved youth and the role of social support in facilitating positive outcomes in adolescents in young adults. This work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Drug Abuse, Department of Defense and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

Cederbaum serves as the immediate past chair of the public health social work section of the American Public Health Association, and serves as the discipline director for two Maternal Child Health-funded programs at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles: Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (CA-LEND) and Pediatric Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine Center (PPSMC).

To reference the work of Julie Cederbaum online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "Julie Cederbaum, faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)