Dr. Julie McCrae

Julie McCrae is a Research Fellow at Chapin Hall. McCrae specializes in systems change, including programmatic innovations, to prevent early childhood adversity and promote child and family well-being. Her expertise is in adverse childhood experiences and social determinants of health with a specialty in early childhood. McCrae takes a social ecological approach to research, studying factors to wellness at the micro and macro levels. Her research employs quantitative and qualitative methodology. Her skills are primarily in quantitative methods, including experimental and quasi-experimental study design, analysis of complex, longitudinal survey data, and analysis of administrative data in agencies such as child welfare, Medicaid, and nonprofit databases.

At Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, McCrae leads research and evaluation in community collaboratives to improve health and well-being and prevent adversity; prevention programs related to child maltreatment and child welfare involvement; and social determinants of health. She was Principal Investigator of Evaluating Community Approaches to Preventing or Mitigating Toxic Stress, a multisite, national study of innovations in pediatric health care to address and mitigate toxic stress in infants. She is Co-Principal Investigator of 100% Community, a collective impact model developed and implemented by the Anna, Age Eight Institute at New Mexico State University. McCrae is Co-Investigator of Maltreatment in Out of Home Care, which uses national data to determine child maltreatment incidence among children in foster care and engages a Youth Advisory Board to co-interpret findings and develop recommendations. She is Co-Principal Investigator of prevention programs implemented in Nebraska’s Family First Prevention Services Plan (FFPSA), where she led a statewide prevention services gap analysis to inform design of the state’s prevention plan.

Prior to her work at Chapin Hall, McCrae was Research Associate Professor at the University of Denver, where she conducted child welfare, child development, and pediatric health care research. Her work has been published in journals such as Archives of Public Health, Prevention Science, Children’s Health Care, and Child Abuse & Neglect.  She was previously Evaluation Consultant with the Children’s Bureau Center for States, and Lead Evaluator of the Mountains and Plains Child Welfare Implementation Center (MPCWIC).

McCrae holds a PhD and MSW from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University.