Email Address:gretchen.domek@cuanschutz.edu
Alt Email Address:gretchen.domek@childrenscolorado.org
Primary Phone:303-724-6285
Dr. Gretchen Domek is an Associate Professor in the Section of General Academic Pediatrics and the William K. Frankenburg Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She is also a general pediatrician, the director of the International Adoption Clinic, and a provider in the Kids In Care Settings (KICS) Clinic at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Her current research focuses on early childhood development in resource limited settings. She has designed and implemented a community health program promoting early childhood health and development in southwest Guatemala and rural China. She has also developed a primary care-based intervention called PUPPETalk (PUppets to Play, Praise, Educate, and Talk) that uses finger puppets to promote positive, language-rich parent-infant interactions. Findings from two pilot studies in the primary care setting have been encouraging, suggesting that families receiving the puppet intervention as early as 2 months of age had better outcomes related to maternal postpartum depression, the cognitive home environment, and early language development during the first year of life as well as improved social-emotional developmental trajectories to age 3 years. While further research is underway to better understand its impact, PUPPETalk is currently being implemented in several hospital-based and community programs. Dr. Domek earned her B.S. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Utah, MPhil in Medical Anthropology from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She completed a pediatric residency and a global heath fellowship at the University of Colorado.