Our Roles & Biographies

Monica Oxford, MSW, PhD, is a Research Professor in Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing at the University of Washington and the Executive Director of the Barnard Center for Infant Mental Health and Development. Her research focuses on early parenting and child developmental outcomes for vulnerable families living in challenging environments. Dr. Oxford’s interest is in how context, parenting, and child characteristics combine to inform particular patterns of child outcomes and how intervention services promote both caregiver and child well-being. Dr. Oxford is also involved in training social service providers throughout Washington on infant mental health, strengths based practice, and how providers can support caregiver-child dyadic interaction from an attachment based perspective.

Dr. Oxford is principal investigator of four NIH grants; the first three are aimed at examining the impact of Promoting First Relationships® (PFR: Kelly et al, 2008). PFR is a brief 10-week home visiting program that is strengths and relationship-based video feedback program. These three studies are randomized control trials in three populations: one RCT for parents involved with child protective services, one RCT for reunified birth families, and one RCT for American Indian families in a rural setting. The fourth NIH grant is aimed at addressing the interaction between family, school, child, and contextual risk such as poverty and early child developmental outcomes Dr. Oxford is also co-principal investigator on three NIH funded RCT testing the effectiveness of PFR in three additional populations (foster care, perinatal mental health setting, and American Indian rural setting).

Carol is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in Snohomish County, WA. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Carroll College in Helena, MT. She later received a Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Washington. Her clinical practice started in 1990 working in a residential treatment facility that specialized in working with children that had disrupted attachment relationships. In 1992 she moved to Western Washington and began working in the field of early childhood mental health. Since then her focus of practice has been assisting parents in better understanding their child’s social and emotional needs and the interplay between trauma and attachment relationships. Carol has spent the last 10 years of her practice working in an Early Intervention (Birth to Three) agency managing counseling services to families that have a child with a developmental delay/disability. She has been providing supervision and training to practitioners in the field of infant/early childhood mental health since 2001 as well as providing workshops for parents of infants and toddlers. She joined the University of Washington as a Promoting First Relationships Master Trainer in 2014.

Sarah Doty is a licensed independent clinical social worker in Washington State. She has worked in the health and human services field for nearly 20 years with a focus on serving Latino immigrants and underserved populations. She worked in an Even Start family literacy program while finishing her undergraduate degree in International Studies and Latin American Studies. Sarah then went on to work at a community health center. In her 12 years there, she worked in several capacities within health education and mental health including the development and implementation of various population-based strategies as well as community-based programs. She was also able to return to her passion discovered through the Even Start program for supporting families, working with mothers and children, providing mental health counseling services and delivering Promoting First Relationships.

She then became a Promoting First Relationships agency trainer and in 2015 she began working with PFR at the University of Washington. She now trains service providers in Promoting First Relationships and facilitates a reflective practice group for Spanish-speaking providers. She also has experience working in an evidence-based integrated mental health/collaborative care model in primary care including at a school-based health center for immigrant and refugee youth. In addition to her work with Promoting First Relationships, she is a clinical trainer for collaborative care and behavioral skills with the University of Washington AIMS Center.

Jeannie has extensive experience in pediatric primary care practice and early childhood and infant mental health. She attended medical school at the University of Washington and completed her residency at the University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital in 1989. She recently retired from her primary care practice in Bellevue, WA after 33 years in clinical practice. She is a developer and trainer for Promoting First Relationships in Pediatrics and has trained hundreds of health care providers and team members in Promoting First Relationships in Pediatrics across the country.