Professor
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Catherine Monk, PhD, is the inaugural Diana Vagelos Professor of Women’s Mental Health and Chief, Division of Women’s Mental Health, in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology (Ob/Gyn) and Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Monk is the founding director of Women’s Mental Health @Ob/Gyn (https://www.obgyn.columbia.edu/about-us/divisions/womens-mental-health), an embedded service helping women across the life course and enhancing health equity by accepting most insurances for mental health care. Dr Monk’s research, at the PerinatalPathways lab (https://www.perinatalpathways.org), brings together the fields of developmental psychopathology, developmental psychobiology, developmental neuroscience, and perinatal psychiatry to focus on the earliest influences on children’s developmental trajectories—those that happen in utero—and how to intervene early to help pregnant people and prevent mental health problems in the next generation. Her research has been continuously funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) since her NIH Career Development award in 2000. Dr. Monk directs the new Center for the Transition to Parenthood (TtP): Two Generation Impact, a research-to-practice initiative to provide greater support and information to all patients undergoing perinatal care, address the mental health of all parents, improve infant outcomes, and promote family well-being.
