Whitney P. Witt, PhD, MPH

Assistant Professor
School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Population Health Sciences
610 Walnut Street
Madison, WI
USA 53726

Biographical Sketch: Dr. Whitney P. Witt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the School of Medicine and Public Health at University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Co-Director of BioPop: Integrative Biopsychosocial Research in Population Health. She holds a PhD in health services research and a MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in women’s studies and law from Hampshire College. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in the Pediatric Health Services Research Program at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children. Prior to her current position, Dr. Witt served as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the Acting Director of the Section on Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Buehler Center on Aging. Dr. Witt brings an interdisciplinary approach to studying the social, behavioral, and psychological factors that contribute to human development and disparities in family health and well-being across the lifespan. Her research addresses how familial relationships influence health behaviors, health and mental health status, and healthcare services use of individuals over time. Moreover, the goal of her research is to understand the physiological, behavioral, and social pathways by which health perceptions affect the health and healthcare use of family members and individuals living with illness. She is currently exploring three primary lines of research: 1) the impact of childhood illness on the family; 2) maternal mental health and the impact on long-term health behaviors, health, and economic outcomes of mothers and children; 3) psychobiology of family caregiving across the lifespan. Dr. Witt is building a research program to examine mind-body interactions and how such interactions may help explain health disparities within and between families. Together, this information will help in constructing effective interventions for these families to improve patient health outcomes, reduce health inequalities, and address family burden.

Papers:
2060.0 Cognitive limitations predict child behavior problems prior to school-age: A national study of children living in the US 3157.0 A lifecourse approach to understanding birth delivery methods in the US: Importance of preconception and pregnancy-related determinants 3158.0 Unmet healthcare need among US children increases subsequent ambulatory care sensitive utilization 3389.0 Increased ambulatory care sensitive emergency room and inpatient utilization due to past year unmet healthcare need among children in the US 4056.0 Preterm birth in the US: The importance of preconception stressful life events and pregnancy-related determinants 4094.0 Stress, immune function, and cellular aging among parents of children with and without cancer or brain tumors 4170.0 Cognitive limitations at nine months of age: The role of cumulative sociodemographic risk and adverse birth outcomes among infants living in the United States 4271.0 A primed pump: The accumulation of maternal stressful life events affects toddler self-regulation at 24 months 4271.0 Accumulation of stressful life events and low birth weight: The case of preconception stress and in utero exposure to 9/11 4355.0 Stress, immune function, and aging among parents of children with and without cancer or brain tumors 5122.0 Preconception stressful life events predict low infant birthweight among women in the United States