Deborah Gorman-Smith

Deborah Gorman-Smith is the Dean and Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. She is also the Principal Investigator and faculty Director of the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention, one of the National Youth Violence Prevention Centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Center, based at the Crown Family School, is devoted to studying and stemming the underlying causes of youth violence through evidence-based, collaborative interventions that focus on families and communities, linking them with schools, the justice system, social service agencies and policy makers.

She has published extensively in areas related to youth and family development, including the relationship between neighborhood characteristics, family functioning and risk and the effects of family-focused, school-based and community-level violence prevention programs.

She is an elected member of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, a current Fellow and the past President for the Society for Prevention Research and has served on other national and state committees including the Board of Scientific Counselors, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control.