For Julie Cederbaum, an assistant professor in the USC School of Social Work, engaging in the principles and practice of social work is a calling she has felt throughout her life.

Even as a teenager, the desire to give her time and services for the benefit of others seemed instinctive.

“I didn’t know what motivated me,” Cederbaum said. “I just felt very natural as a listener and in helping others with their problems. It was always really easy for me to talk to people I didn’t know and engage with others.”

In her current position at USC, Cederbaum examines family communication and parent–child interactions and their possible effects on risk behavior in adolescents. Although much of her research has been directed toward HIV prevention and education for young women, it also extends to general behavior patterns of all adolescents and the role of parental relations in promoting positive choices.

“None of us are born with an innate ability to parent,” Cederbaum said. “What is provided in terms of knowledge and skill building helps shape the way you parent. The typical practice of the past has been to intervene with kids or parents, but studies have much less frequently focused on resolving issues as a pair.”

Cederbaum seeks to convey how family values and belief systems are major intervening factors in adolescent choices concerning risk behaviors. Parents often assume their children are receiving the messages they desire because of the activities or behaviors in which the parents participate. But that assumption is often incorrect, and a more in-depth form of communication is required.

“It’s about empowering parents to take the initiative to help shape their kids,” Cederbaum said. “Unless you tell kids what you want and what you feel is valuable, you don’t know if they are taking away the right message. What we want to be providing are modifiable skills on some level that are supported and reasonable enough for people to use with their children."

Empowering both sides of the parent–child relationship through better communication leads to healthier families, Cederbaum said. Adolescents come to understand what is expected of them and why, which can induce a sense of safety and comfort in terms of openly discussing issues they are trying to resolve.

“There is enough literature that shows kids will prioritize what their parents say over the opinions of their peers if the parents remain present in their kids’ lives,” she said.

Back to the beginning

Most of Cederbaum’s early experiences in social work revolved around child welfare services. A Santa Monica native, she began working as a peer counselor at an adolescent transitional housing placement center during high school. As an undergraduate at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, Cederbaum engaged in community outreach as part of the women’s soccer team and studied abroad in Kenya, where she helped organize the Food for Glue program, which encouraged local teens to turn in bottles of glue often used as stimulants in exchange for food.

Cederbaum also held two internships during her master’s degree studies at UCLA. At El Nido Family Center, she worked with pregnant teens. At the LA Free Clinic, now the Saban Free Clinic, she received certification as an HIV counselor and test administrator, and also developed an educational prevention curriculum and content for youth outreach efforts.

However, her experience at a housing program for families with an HIV-infected parent in Los Angeles, a position she took after completing her master’s degree, created the largest ripple in her career path.

Cederbaum noticed that children living in the program were engaging in the same risk behaviors that had put their parents at risk of contracting HIV.

In particular, the presence of a 16-year-old pregnant teenager made her realize that unprotected sex remained a serious issue for HIV-affected teens. This realization caused her to wonder what factors affected the decision-making processes of these adolescents if having an HIV-infected parent did not serve as motivation to make better choices.

“I came to recognize that parents were not talking about HIV,” said Cederbaum. “I think that experience completely informed my rationale for going back to school and the research I ended up doing.”

During the following 3 years at the University of Pennsylvania, Cederbaum fine-tuned her ideas in a dissertation focused on mother–daughter communication about abstinence and safer sex. Specifically, her research explored the differences between HIV-positive mothers and HIV-negative mothers in terms of their communications with their daughters regarding HIV-risk behaviors.

Coming to USC after earning her doctoral degree was an easy decision, said Cederbaum, because of both the collegiality she sensed among the faculty and its proximity to her family. Returning to Los Angeles felt like completing a circle.

“Los Angeles is where all these ideas came from,” she said. “Coming back was almost like doing homage to the people who helped lift me to where I am. The experiences I had here really shaped who I am as a researcher, scholar, and thinker. To be able to utilize my connections and engage this community, which is so ripe for social change, is really amazing.”

While at USC, Cederbaum has received funding for a number of projects, including a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse to investigate communication between mothers and sons about alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use. She is also currently a coinvestigator on a project funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation exploring pregnancy, parenting, and foster youth. Cederbaum also works closely with Professor Suzanne Wenzel to adapt evidence-based HIV risk reduction interventions for use with homeless women.

In addition to her research, Cederbaum teaches two courses on topics related to social work and public health; she earned a second master’s degree in public health from the University of Pennsylvania while earning her PhD.

As she continues to pursue her research interests, she hopes to develop strategies for parents to gain proactive knowledge and skills applicable to their everyday lives.

“We have so many punitive systems, but that is not the vision I have for how this work should be disseminated,” she said. “I don’t want it to be about troubled families and fixing them. The work should hopefully influence positive parenting and positive relationships and promote family wellness as a requirement for family reintegration.”