Catherine McDonald, PhD, RN

Catherine McDonald, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Family and Community Health at the School of Nursing. She is a pediatric nurse scientist with a focused program of research aimed at promoting health and reducing injury in youth. She leads a strong portfolio of research on adolescent injury prevention funded by the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles on injury prevention related to children and adolescents in the topics of driving behaviors, motor vehicle crash, child passenger safety, concussion, and community violence exposure. She is on the executive committee of the PENN Injury Science Center (PISC) — a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) funded Injury Control Research Center, and Co-Director of the Training Core, which helps oversee undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate training. She has led research initiatives in the development of interventions for young drivers, as well as randomized controlled trial design, novel assessment of adolescent driver behavior, and recruitment and long-term retention of adolescent drivers. She is also a Senior Scholar with the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.