Student Spotlight – Robyn Cree

Robyn Cree was well versed in behavioral health and data before beginning her PhD program in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. She studied Biobehavioral health as an undergraduate at Penn State and worked first for the United States Census Bureau and then at the University of Sydney on a qualitative research study of HPV vaccine decision-making in Australia. She is particularly interested in mental health epidemiology.

For her dissertation research, Robyn uses data from an adoption study to understand genetically-based differences in children's behavioral responses to home environmental factors, including parenting behaviors and parent mental health. The adoption design teases apart genetic versus environmental effects because adopted children are not genetically related to their adoptive parents. For example, if poor mental health in the adoptive parents is associated with poor mental health in the adoptive children, then the effect has to be environmentally driven, because the parent has not passed down their genes to their child. In this type of study, the birth parent’s mental health can be used as a proxy for genetic risk for mental disorders.

Through this research Robyn has found that as adoptive mother's mental health problems increased, children's behavior problems increased only for those children with the genetic risk factor. Conversely, she found that as negative parenting behaviors increased in adoptive mothers, children's behavior problems increased only for those children without the genetic risk factor. This suggests that a child's genetic risk may interact with the environment in different ways depending on the exposure. This knowledge is important to consider when designing and evaluating behavioral interventions for young children.

Robyn has been selected to be an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a post she will assume after graduation in May 2017.