Center for Innovations in Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health
Co-Directors
Roseanne Clark, PhD, IMH-E® is Co-director of the Center for Innovations in Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. Dr. Clark is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and is the Co-Founder and Faculty Director of the UW Infant, Early Childhood and Family Mental Health Capstone Certificate Program. Dr. Clark developed and was Director of the Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Clinic in the UW Department of Psychiatry for over 25 years. She has provided teaching and supervision on the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of mental health disturbances in infancy and early childhood and early parent-child relationships to psychiatry and pediatric residents and post-doctoral fellows, interns, and graduate students in clinical, counseling and school psychology programs. She is a licensed psychologist and has received Endorsement as an Infant Mental Health Mentor. Dr. Clark developed the widely used Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA), and the Mother-Infant Therapy Group Approach for Postpartum Depression (M-ITG), was a major contributor to the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Development Disorders of infancy and Early Childhood (DC: 0-3) and is a national trainer for the DC:0-5. For over 35 years, Dr. Clark’s research and numerous articles have focused on screening, evaluation and treatment of postpartum depression and infant and early childhood mental health, maternal employment and early parent-child relationships at-risk. Through the UW Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Team, Dr. Clark provides mental health consultation to home visiting and early care and education programs and mentoring for aspiring IMH mental health consultants. Dr. Clark is invited to speak, teach and consult nationally and internationally. Dr. Clark has translated the results of her research and the evidence-based evaluation and treatment protocols into community-based interventions for underserved women, their infants and families including collaborating with community partners in Dane County to develop the Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), a comprehensive home visitation program for families with infants and young children affected by poverty. She has been committed to conducting research to inform policy and practices that impact women in the childbearing/childrearing years, infants, young children and their families. She has served on state and national scientific advisory committees including the Wisconsin Governor’s Early Intervention Coordinating Council, the Lt. Governor’s Task Force on Women and Depression, the Department of Health Services Maternal-Child Health Advisory Committee, the Wisconsin Task Force on Perinatal Mood Disorders, the National Institute of Mental Health Roundtable on Perinatal Depression and the NIMH Workgroup on Assessment of Infant/Toddler Mental Health. Dr. Clark has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on numerous NIH funded studies including a randomized clinical trial examining the efficacy of a mother-infant relational approach for women experiencing major depression in the postpartum period and a study investigating the validity of screening and assessment measures of social-emotional functioning in infants and young children. She is currently partnering with the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families on the Addressing Postpartum Depression in Wisconsin Home Visiting Programs and the HRSA Innovations Grant in Early Relational Screening, Assessment and Support in Home Visiting projects. She has also received with colleagues in the School of Medicine and Public Health, funding for a CDC Prevention Research Center and is PI for the primary research project in the Center focused on the evaluation of a Brief Therapeutic Approach for Maternal Postpartum Depression and Mother-Infant Relationships.
Dr. Clark was awarded the Champion in Women’s Health Award for Mental Health from the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation, the University of Wisconsin Van Hise Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award for Outreach Education and the James R. Ryan Award which is presented by the Wisconsin Alliance for Infant Mental Health to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the social-emotional development of infants, young children and their families in Wisconsin. Dr. Clark provides academic oversight and direction for the Capstone Certificate Program and teaches, advises students, and provides reflective consultation for mental health professionals in the program as well as guidance for visiting faculty.
Center for Innovations in Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health
Executive Committee
Dr. Jill Denson, PhD, MSW, APSW is a Research Assistant Professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. She serves as director of the UW Prevention Research Center, engaging researchers, community members, and translational partners in expanding community-based prevention research and health promotion to improve the health of women, infants, and families. Dr. Denson is passionate about maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, and health equity, with a focus on examining how social and structural drivers affect health outcomes. Dr. Denson’s research interests are rooted in collaborating with community partners to address health disparities through community-engaged research. She is particularly interested in building robust community partnerships, and centering the voices of those who are marginalized through capacity building and innovative research strategies.
Jen Perfetti, LPC, IMH-E® is core faculty with the UW Infant, Early Childhood and Family Mental Health Capstone Certificate Program. She provides Instruction on the topics of transition to parenthood, psychosocial stages of pregnancy and perinatal mental health, as well as facilitation of a Reflective Mentoring Group and Individual Reflective Clinical Consultation. Ms. Perfetti completed her clinical training in Counseling Psychology at Northwestern University and is a Licensed Counselor and an Endorsed Infant Mental Health Clinical Mentor. She founded Luna Perinatal Counseling in 2005, a psychotherapy practice focused on serving women and couples during the pregnancy, postpartum and early parenting periods. She is also the Clinical and Professional Development Coordinator with the UW Department of Psychiatry Parent-Infant Mental Health Programs, including the CDC funded Prevention Research Center Core Research Project “Addressing Postpartum Depression in WI Home Visiting programs.” Ms. Perfetti provides professional development to Home Visitors and Clinicians in efforts to increase supports focused on maternal mental health and mother-infant relationships in underserved counties across the state. Ms. Perfetti provides Reflective Mental Health Consultation to Public Health Madison and Dane County, to projects affiliated with the WI Alliance for Infant Mental Health and to other Infant Mental Health providers across the state.
Julie Poehlmann, PhD is the Dorothy A. O’Brien Chair in Human Ecology and a Professor of Human Development & Family Studies in the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology. She is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar on children with incarcerated parents. As a child clinical psychologist, she seeks to facilitate social justice for young children and their families and to understand and promote resilience processes while decreasing risk and trauma exposure. To do this, she studies the health and social, emotional, and cognitive development of high-risk infants and young children and their families, including children with incarcerated parents, children raised by their grandparents, and children born preterm, including examining the intergenerational transmission of risk, trauma, resilience, and healing. Dr. Poehlmann uses both quantitative and qualitative methods in her work, especially observational methods that focus on young children and families in their natural contexts, as well as physiological measures. She also designs and evaluates interventions for children and their parents, including interdisciplinary multimodal interventions that can be used in the criminal justice system and contemplative practices aimed at decreasing stress and increasing well-being in children and families. Dr. Poehlmann served as an advisor to Sesame Street on its Emmy-nominated initiative for children with incarcerated parents. She has also served as a psychology supervisor in the Waisman Center’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Clinic and teaches a community-based course in conjunction with campus and community early childhood education centers. Dr. Poehlmann has consulted with PBS Wisconsin on an outreach effort for families struggling with methamphetamine addiction, worked with JustDane (formerly Madison-area Urban Ministry) to evaluate their mentoring program for children of incarcerated parents, and evaluated Camp Reunite, a summer camp for children with imprisoned mothers. She is on the leadership teams of the International Coalition for Children with Incarcerated Parents and the Wisconsin Alliance for Infant Mental Health. Dr. Poehlmann’s current studies include the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study (HBCD) and the Enhanced Visits Program for children with incarcerated parents.
Dr. Neeta Shenai, MD is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health where she currently serves as the Phase 3 Director in Psychiatry. She completed her residency and fellowship in consultation-liaison psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where she received specialized training in reproductive psychiatry. She is dedicated to improving the quality of care in reproductive psychiatry through education and innovative clinical initiatives, and has served as co-director of the women’s mental health and reproductive psychiatry area of concentration, creation of modules in the National Reproductive Psychiatry Curriculum, and helped implement a tele-psychiatry service to two rural obstetrics and gynecology units. Her academic and clinical interests include perinatal mental health, posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma related disorders, and medical student education.
Sarah Strong, MSSW, LCSW, IMH-E® is the Co-director of the Infant, Early Childhood and Family Mental Health Capstone Certificate Program, the Wisconsin Child-Parent Psychotherapy Learning Community, and the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) System Training Site at the Department of Psychiatry, UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Each of these programs are held within the Center for Innovations in Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. Ms. Strong is engaged with all aspects of the UW Capstone Certificate Program, and provides instruction for the program on attachment, the intersection of attachment and exposure to trauma in the early years, trauma principles and treatment for very young children, secondary traumatic stress, and the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) System. She provides reflective consultation for clinicians who are in the Wisconsin Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) Learning Community and for licensed mental health clinicians enrolled in the Capstone Certificate Program. Ms. Strong has worked in the field of mental health for over thirty years as a psychotherapist, reflective consultant and educator specializing in parent-infant/early childhood mental health and is endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Clinical Mentor by the Wisconsin Alliance for Infant Mental Health. She is on the National Roster of Child Parent Psychotherapy Providers and Trainers and is a Wisconsin State Trainer for Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP). She has also worked with faculty of the Brazelton Institute at Boston Children’s Hospital to become endorsed as a Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) System Trainer. In 2022, Ms. Strong was awarded the James R. Ryan Award which is presented by the Wisconsin Alliance for Infant Mental Health to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the social-emotional development of infants, young children and their families in Wisconsin.
Linda Tuchman-Ginsberg, PhD was the co-founder of the UW Infant, Early Childhood and Family Mental Health Capstone Certificate Program along with Dr. Roseanne Clark and served as co-director of the Program for a decade and retired from that role in 2019. She has a background in education with the focus of her doctoral studies in the field of disabilities, specializing in early intervention/early childhood, parent partnerships and professional development. Dr. Tuchman-Ginsberg worked at the UW-Madison Waisman Center for over 30 years where she served as Program Director of the Early Childhood and Education Professional Development Program. She directed several projects related to early childhood professional development, autism, policy development and system building. This includes 25 years with the Wisconsin Birth to 3 Professional Development Program. After retiring from her position at the Waisman Center in June 2013, she moved to the Department of Psychiatry to continue to Co-Direct the Capstone Certificate Program in Infant, Early Childhood and Family Mental Health and support the Wisconsin Child-Parent Psychotherapy Learning Community. In recent years, she expanded her role in the Parent-Infant/Early Childhood Programs in the Department of Psychiatry to join the Supportive Practice Team of the Innovations in Early Relational Screening, Assessment and Support in Home Visiting Project and the UW Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health and Developmental Consultation team to provide Reflective Consultation to UW Campus Childcare Programs. She has been involved in policy and advocacy for young children and families, including the Infant/Toddler Collective Impact Team of the WI Office of Children’s Mental Health and helping to bring the Pyramid Model and Newborn Hearing Screening to Wisconsin. In 2020, she was awarded the James R. Ryan, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Alliance for Infant Mental Health.
Tova Walsh, PhD is the Anne Wackman Oros Associate Professor and serves as director of the PhD program in the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work. Her research focuses on parenting in children’s earliest years of life, in two interconnected lines of study: (1) adjustment among families with young children facing adversity, and (2) strengthening inclusion of fathers in perinatal and early childhood programs. Dr. Walsh designs and conducts her research to amplify the voices of marginalized parents, deepen understanding of their strengths as well as the challenges they face, and inform the development of interventions that are responsive to their needs. Dr. Walsh’s research draws on her experience working in low-income communities as a home visitor to families with children ages 0-3. Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Doris Duke Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and National Institutes of Health, and covered by media outlets including Reuters, Slate, Men’s Health Magazine, and National Public Radio. National leadership roles include service as a member of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health and Developmental Neuroscience Task Force of the Council on Social Work Education and the Board of Directors of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE).