Rachel K. Myers, PhD, MS

Dr. Myers is a research scientist at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) and a research scholar with the Center for Violence Prevention at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She serves as co-director for the CHOP Community Violence and Trauma Support programs, including the Violence Intervention Program (VIP). Dr. Myers is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and teaching faculty in the University of Pennsylvania Master in Public Health program, where she routinely serves as a capstone advisor.

Dr. Myers' research focuses on both intentional and unintentional pediatric and adolescent injury prevention and recovery. In her work, she addresses the epidemiology of intentional pediatric injuries and evaluation of hospital-based and community-focused programming to support recovery of injured youth and their families. She leads efforts to enhance the evaluation of pediatric hospital-based violence intervention programs with support from the National Institute of Justice. She collaborated with member programs of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (The HAVI) to establish the feasibility of cross-site data sharing among hospital-based violence intervention programs and is working to establish outcomes and practices that can enhance understanding and collection of outcomes achieved by these programs. Additionally, with community partners, Dr. Myers is co-leading several community-based participatory research projects to support community-based violence prevention programming and co-develop tools and approaches to support programs in measuring and demonstrating their impact.

Additionally, Dr. Myers remains actively involved in work addressing child and adolescent passenger safety in motor vehicle crashes. She is currently conducting a study examining the use of child restraints and injury outcomes in motor vehicle crashes in New Jersey, using the novel New Jersey-Safety and Health Outcomes (NJ-SHO) data warehouse. Dr. Myers also serves as a co-investigator of an NICHD-funded study examining transportation and driving among young adults with autism.