Dr. Davison's central research interests include Parenting and children's lifestyle behaviors (e.g., diet, physical activity and sleep); family interventions to prevent child obesity; physical activity and child mental health; development and validation of conceptual frameworks and parent-report surveys; community-based participatory research; and implementation science.

Rachel Scrivano, PhD is an implementation science Postdoctoral Research Fellow responsible for assisting with studying the implementation of the MI Vacuna trial. Her broad research interests include implementation science and healthy aging. More specifically, she is interested in factors that impact successful intervention implementation in community-based settings; intergenerational relationships; addressing self- and other-directed ageism.

Rachel is skilled in developing research designs for experimental, qualitative, and mixed methods studies. She is currently an Implementation Science consultant for a multi-phased RRF Foundation for Aging grant. This project focuses on understanding determinants of sustainability for an intergenerational reverse mentoring technology program implemented within higher education. She is also collaborating as an Implementation Science consultant for an NIA R21 project focused on developing and studying early implementation of a novel intergenerational program focused on improving cognitive outcomes for preschoolers and older adults. 

Rachel earned her PhD in Social Work at The Ohio State University. She has experience working on multiple million-dollar research grants focused on developing and implementing community-based interventions to address social disparities among underserved populations. Rachel is skilled in identifying and addressing significant research gaps in the field of aging and implementation science and conducting scoping and systematic reviews.  Read her work here.

Mariane de Oliveira, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Boston College School of Social Work where she works with the Fathers & Families Study. Her research focuses on the role of fathers in promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors—such as diet, physical activity, and sleep—in their children. She is particularly interested in BMI trajectories and understanding how fatherhood influences these patterns over time.

Mariane's research centers on the intersection of nutritional epidemiology and public health, with a particular focus on developing nutritional assessment protocols for children and adolescents. She earned her PhD in Public Health Nutrition from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, with a research exchange period at the University of Porto, Portugal. During her PhD, she developed a new international growth reference (MULT), which includes growth charts for height, Body Mass Index (BMI), and Allometric Body Mass Index (ABMI) for children and adolescents. Her expertise includes the analysis of longitudinal nutritional data and the application of advanced statistical modeling techniques, such as growth curve modeling and multilevel analyses, using R software.

Natalie Grafft, MSW is a Doctoral candidate within the Boston College School of Social Work (BCSSW). She processes, cleans and analyzes data for the Fathers and Families study. Her broad research interests include factors that promote and inhibit child and family health and wellbeing. More specifically, she is interested in the role of fathers in children's health. Natalie is skilled in  cleaning and analyzing within large longitudinal data sets. 

After earning her MSW in 2013 from the University of Southern California, Natalie worked as a clinical social worker for seven years – most of this time was spent in pediatric health care settings. Most recently, she worked as an inpatient hematology social worker at Boston Children's Hospital. There, she spent the majority of her time working with children with sickle cell disease when they were hospitalized for pain. After four years at the hospital, Natalie entered the PhD program in BCSSW in 2020. 

Natalie is passionate about promoting child and family health. She currently spends her time working on the Fathers and Families study, where she examines the influence fathers have on their children's health and development. After completing her PhD, Natalie aims to secure a tenure-track assistant professor position at a large research university. Read her work here.

Janin Alfonso, LICSW is a social work practitioner that serves as a project coordinator for the MI Vacuna intervention. She is a first-generation Latina with a background in clinical social work and a passion for using research to drive social change. Janin earned her MSW at the Boston College School of Social Work and is an alumna of the Latinx Leadership Initiative (LLI), which follows a cohort-based model that trains bilingual and bicultural social workers to work with Latinx communities. Janin is dedicated to advancing health equity in underserved communities.