Dr. Eurnestine Brown
PhD
BOARD MEMBER
Dr. Eurnestine Brown brings a wealth of experience to her role as the first Director of Relational Equity and Belonging at the Brazelton Touchpoints Center. She is a former Senior TTA Specialist and Resource Development Project Manager II at the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement. Dr. Brown has served as a Child Development Program Director in Early Head Start (EHS) and Head Start (HS): home-based, center-based, family care, and local program options. As a Consultant and EHS Start-Up Planner she provided overall program supports and guidance to local and national EHS programs.
Dr. Brown's specialty areas include adolescent pregnancy and prenatal development, children/families experiencing poverty, racial, gender and health inequities, parental socialization practices and early childhood socioemotional development, Early Head Start/Head Start, and resiliency. Eurnestine recently became a Doula, completed the Brazelton Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system training, moderated BTC’s Parenting While Black 6-week, free webinar series for and by Black parents, and received an additional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Workplace certification. She hopes to expand her work with pregnant and expectant families and the Doula community to address racial and health inequities in families of color.
As a seasoned Developmental Psychologist, her research focus incorporates a multi-method approach that is observational and longitudinal. She has extensive experience in research design, implementation, analysis, and evaluation. She has recruited, interviewed, and partnered with non-profit agencies, school districts, child and adolescent clinics, communities and families across early childhood. Her research background includes the examination of maternal/paternal depression, infant mental health, childhood resiliency, and mother-child relationships in the context of substance misuse. As a Senior Research Associate (Ounce of Prevention Fund) she provided developmental and research support and direction, including grant writing and program and policy documentation.
Dr. Brown has also served as Principle and Co-Principle investigator on multiple national projects examining transitions to public school in Head Start children, parental competence in families of color, particularly African American and Native American families.
At the university level, she has served as a faculty member in the departments of psychology, child and family studies, and child psychiatry. She has consistently taught courses (in-person and online) on Developmental Psychology, Parenting, and Racial and Ethnic Identity Development. She is the co-editor of African-American Women: An Ecological Perspective (Falmer Press) and has published papers in such journals as Developmental Psychology and Development and Psychopathology. She currently serves on the Editorial Board on the Infant Mental Health Journal.