Dr. Leslie Davidson

Biography

Leslie Davidson's primary research interests encompass disability in children, international child health, screening, epidemiology, and the prevention of accidents and violence, particularly intimate partner violence. Davidson worked with an international team to develop an efficient approach to screen children with disabilities in developing countries over five years, and she led the Central Harlem School Health Program, which included launching a childhood injury surveillance program in Northern Manhattan, linked to the development and evaluation of the Harlem Hospital Injury Prevention Program. After moving to England in 1992, she worked with the National Health Service as a Pediatric Epidemiologist and senior lecturer in Pediatric Epidemiology and Public Health at King's College, London. In 1997, she became the director of the National Pediatric Epidemiology Unit at Oxford, where she studied the follow-up of at-risk neonates and the organization of maternity care for women facing intimate partner violence. At Columbia University, Davidson leads the dating violence work at the Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention and directs the Center for Child and Family Life Epidemiology. She also serves as the principal investigator on an NIH-funded study addressing the health and psychosocial needs of children living in areas with extremely high poverty and HIV prevalence.

Research Interests