Sion Kim Harris, PhD, CPH, Co-Director
Sion Kim Harris, PhD CPH, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Co-Director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Center for Adolescent Behavioral Health Research (CABHRe). Previously, she served as Director of the Center for Adolescent Substance use and Addiction Research (CeASAR), founded in 1999 by Dr. John Rogers Knight, MD.
She has conducted pioneering research in adolescent substance use screening and brief intervention strategies for use in medical offices, including validating the CRAFFT screen (now updated to version 2.1, available at www.crafft.org) which has become the most widely studied and recommended screening tool for problematic adolescent substance use. She published the first large, multi-site international trial of primary care screening and clinician brief advice for adolescent alcohol and drug use. She has conducted research in partnership with investigators worldwide including in Zambia, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Brazil.
Dr. Harris has published over 80 original scientific publications, and has received numerous awards, including the Young Professional Award from the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association, the John Nelson Chappel Best Research Award from the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse, and the Estherann Grace Teaching Award and T. Berry Brazelton Innovation Award from the Boston Children’s Hospital Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine, and Division of Developmental Medicine, respectively. She received her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Selected Publications
- Harris SK, Csemy L, Sherritt L, Starostova O, Van Hook, Johnson J, Boulter S, Brooks T, Carey P, Kossack R, Kulig JW, Van Vranken N, Knight JR. Computer-facilitated substance use screening and brief advice for teens in primary care: an international trial. Pediatrics. 2012 Jun;129(6):1072-82.
- Harris SK, Knight JR, Van Hook S, Sherritt L, Brooks T, Kulig JW, Nordt C, Saitz R. Adolescent substance use screening in primary care: Validity of computer self-administered versus clinician-administered screening. Substance Abuse. 2016 Jan-Mar;37(1):197-203. PMCID: 4573375
- Harris SK, Johnson JK, Sherritt L, Copelas S, Rappo MA, Wilson CR. Putting adolescents at risk: riding with drinking drivers who are adults in the home. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. 2017 Jan;78(1):146-151.
- Knight, JR, Kuzubova K, Csemy L, Sherritt L, Copelas S, Harris SK. Computer-facilitated screening and brief advice to reduce adolescents’ heavy episodic drinking: a study in two countries. Journal of Adolescent Health. 2018 Jan;62(1):118-120. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2017.08.013. PMID: 29054734
- Knight JR, Sherritt L, Gibson EB, Levinson J, Grubb LK, Samuels RC, Silva T, Vernacchio L, Wornham W, Harris SK. Effect of computer-based substance use screening and brief behavioral counseling vs. usual care for adolescents in pediatric primary care: a pilot randomized clinical trial. JAMA Network Open. 2019 Jun 5;2(6):e196258. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.6258.
Lydia A. Shrier, MD, MPH, Co-Director
Dr. Lydia Shrier’s research focuses on the links between mental health and risk behavior in adolescents and young adults. Dr. Shrier has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and other sources to conduct research using momentary assessment methods with mobile devices to study emotional states, social contexts, and health behaviors in vivo. Based on this work, Dr. Shrier and her collaborators have developed interventions to reduce risk behaviors that combine counseling with mobile momentary intervention, including MOMENT to reduce cannabis use in adolescents and young adults who use frequently, and MARSSI to reduce risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection among young women with depression.
Dr. Shrier and her collaborators also created the Safer Sex Intervention (SSI), a theory-based individualized intervention to reduce sexual risk behaviors in high-risk adolescent girls. The Safer Sex Intervention is included in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Compendium of Evidence-Based HIV Prevention Interventions and the Department of Health and Human Services Teen Pregnancy Prevention Evidence Review. Multiple sites across the U.S. have conducted SSI replications. An independent randomized controlled trial in three replication sites (>1800 adolescent girls) found long-term positive effects of SSI.
Dr. Shrier has collaborated with several leading researchers to advance screening, intervention, and clinician education related to adolescent substance use. She collaborated with Dr. John Knight on the development of the widely-used CRAFFT screen for problem substance use in adolescents. With Dr. Sharon Levy, Dr. Shrier co-developed the S2BIscreen for adolescent substance use. Dr. Shrier is co-investigator with Dr. Sion Harris on two NIH funded studies, a randomized controlled trial of the computer-facilitated Screening and clinician Brief Intervention system for primary care, and a project to integrate the computerized Screening and provider Brief Advice system for adolescent substance use and the CHADIS online clinical process support system for pediatric primary care.
Lydia Shrier received an MD with Distinction in Research from Albany Medical School. She completed internship and residency in Pediatrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital and a fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. She received an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Shrier has been recognized for her scholarly work, leadership, mentorship, and excellence in clinical care through numerous awards and honors and is a Fellow of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. She serves as Chair of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study Section CHHD-M Health, Behavior and Context Subcommittee. Dr. Shrier is Director of Research for the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Selected Publications
- Shrier LA, Burke PJ, Parker S, Edwards R, Jonestrask C, Pluhar E, Harris SK. Development and pilot testing of a counseling-plus-mHealth intervention to reduce risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection in young women with depression. mHealth;6:17. Online 2020 Apr 5. doi:10.21037/mhealth.2019.11.05.
- Shrier LA, Burke PJ, Kells M, Scherer EA, Sarda V, Jonestrask CJ, Xuan Z, Harris SK. Pilot randomized trial of MOMENT, a motivational counseling-plus-Ecological Momentary Intervention to reduce marijuana use in youth. mHealth. 2018;4(7). doi: 10.21037/mhealth.2018.07.04
- Shrier LA, Ross CS, Blood EA. Momentary positive and negative affect preceding marijuana use events in youth. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2014;75:781-9. doi: 10.15288/jsad.2014.75.781.
- Shrier LA, Feldman HA, Black SK, Walls C, Kendall AD, Lops C, Beardslee WR. Momentary affective states surrounding sexual intercourse in depressed adolescents and young adults. Arch Sex Behav. 2012;41:1161-1171. Epub 2011; doi: 10.1007/s10508-011-9787-4.
- Shrier LA, Ancheta R, Goodman E, Chiou VM, Lyden MR, Emans SJ. Randomized controlled trial of a safer sex intervention for high-risk adolescent girls. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2001;155:73-79. doi: 10.1001/archpedi.155.1.73.
Brittany Gluskin, MA, Clinical Research Specialist II617-919-1305
Brittany.Gluskin@childrens.harvard.edu
Brittany Gluskin, MA, Clinical Research Specialist II
Brittany Gluskin has a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After earning her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University, she moved to Boston to work as a research assistant in the Psychiatry Department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital before joining Boston Children’s Hospital as a Clinical Research Specialist. Her previous research experiences have included subjects ranging from psoriasis to Parkinson’s disease to mental health, with her primary interests involving research on preemptive interventions for depressed adolescents and young adults.Selected Publications
- Gluskin BS, O’Connell M, Falk G, Shrier LA, Guss CE. COVID-19 impacts and videoconference healthcare preferences in relation to depression and sexual risk behaviors among young adults assigned female at birth: a cross-sectional study. Mhealth. 2023 Apr 3;9:15. doi: 10.21037/mhealth-22-38. PMID: 37089271; PMCID: PMC10119438.
Jessica Maturo, BA, Clinical Research Assistant I
Jessica Maturo has a BA in Psychology from Boston College. As an undergraduate research assistant, she studied social decision-making and conflict resolution in children and adolescents. She also completed a clinical research internship with the Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she worked on a project that tested the effectiveness of a smoking cessation smartphone application. Jessica is primarily interested in child/adolescent behavioral and mental health.Nicholas McCaskill, BA, Clinical Research Assistant I
Nicholas McCaskill has a BA from the University of Massachusetts Boston and is a long-standing LGBTQ+ activist. During his undergraduate career, he completed a senior honors thesis to investigate the prevalence of the well-established suicide risk factor, hopelessness, among Black transgender men and transmasculine persons. As a young professional, Nicholas has worked to address sexual health disparities and its intersecting factor, substance use, among LGBTQ+ youth of color. This has amplified his interest to extend his prior knowledge to the broader adolescent/young adult population.
Maddie O’Connell, MPH, Clinical Research Specialist II617-919-6964
madison.oconnell@childrens.harvard.edu
Maddie O’Connell, MPH, Clinical Research Specialist II
Maddie O’Connell earned her BA in Sociology and Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. She later earned her Master of Public Health degree at Boston University’s School of Public Health (BUSPH), where she completed a functional certificate in Epidemiology & Biostatistics and a context certificate in Maternal & Child Health. Before joining the CABHRe (then CeASAR) team in 2019, she worked on research teams at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Her area of research interest is focused primarily on adolescent behavioral health topics from an inclusive public health lens.Selected Publications
- O’Connell M, Gluskin B, Parker S, Burke PJ, Pluhar E, Guss CE, Shrier LA. Adapting a Counseling-Plus-mHealth Intervention for the Virtual Environment to Reduce Sexual and Reproductive Health Risk Among Young Women with Depression. Prev Sci. 2023 Mar 7:1–13. doi: 10.1007/s11121-023-01506-4. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36881344; PMCID: PMC9989584.
- O’Connell M, Levy S, Shrier LA, Harris SK. Trends in cannabis-related attitudes and behaviors among cannabis-using adolescent and young adult outpatients following medical cannabis legalization in Massachusetts. Substance Abuse. 2021;0(0):1-8. doi:10.1080/08897077.2021.1941517
Madeline Smith, MA, Clinical Research Specialist I617-355-6154
madeline.smith@childrens.harvard.edu
Madeline Smith, MA, Clinical Research Specialist I
Maddie was born and raised in Indiana and attended undergrad at the College of Wooster, where she was a Psychology major and an Anthropology minor. She then left the Midwest to pursue her Master’s at Tufts University in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. Maddie is interested in child/adolescent psychopathology and understanding disparities in access to care and treatment for children and adolescents. Her interests continue to grow and expand as she continues to work in research. Outside of work she enjoys reading, volleyball, rock climbing, traveling, and picnics in the Commons.