Directory Profile
Courtney Welton-Mitchell PhD, MA
Assistant Professor, Director (Certificate in Climate & Disaster Resilience)
- Center for Health, Work & Environment
- Department of Environmental & Occupational Health
Courtney Welton-Mitchell, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, where she directs the Certificate in Climate and Disaster Resilience. She is also a research associate with the Natural Hazards Center, IBS, UCB. She is trained as a social psychologist and a mental health clinician specializing in traumatic stress. She has worked for several years in complex humanitarian crisis, first as a humanitarian aid worker, and later as an intervention researcher. Her research focuses on health/public health interventions in disasters and complex humanitarian crises using mixed methods. In recent years she implemented and evaluated interventions in Nepal, Haiti, Malaysia, and Lebanon. She has also conducted studies on public health messaging campaigns and social norms approaches to behavioral change. Her current research and consultancy projects include mental health integrated climate adaptation and disaster preparedness initiatives—in public schools in Colorado, among agricultural communities in N. India, wildfire affected communities in Colorado and Australia, and working with humanitarian aid workers in Ukraine and Turkey. In collaboration with colleagues at the DU, she leads annual disaster simulation exercises focused on complex humanitarian crises.
Areas of Expertise
- Mental health integrated climate adaptation and disaster preparedness intervention research in disaster prone and fragile ecological settings
- Mental health integrated interpersonal violence intervention research in complex humanitarian crises (involving refugee populations and other forced migrants)
- Staff wellbeing initiatives with workers in high risk settings: focus on public school teachers and humanitarian aid workers
- Public health messaging campaigns and social norms approaches to attitude and behavioral change in disasters and complex humanitarian crises
- Psychological and other factors influencing risk communication, perception, and behaviors during disasters and complex humanitarian crises.
Education, Licensure & Certifications
- PhD, Social Psychology, University of Denver, 2012 (Tool: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience)
- MA, Affect/Social Psychology, University of Denver, 2009
- MA, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, University of New Mexico, 1997
Awards
- U.S. Fulbright Scholar Ambassador—U.S. Fulbright Commission (2020-2022)
- U.S. Fulbright Research Scholar—Malaysian-American Commission on Education Exchange (2017–2018)
- Outstanding Dissertation in Psychology, American Psychological Association—Div. 56 Trauma Psychology (2013)
Affiliations
- Co-Chair, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's Learning from Earthquakes Public Health Subcommittee