Megan C. Kearns, PhD

Behavioral Scientist, Research and Evaluation Branch, Division of Violence Prevention

Areas of Expertise

• Intimate partner violence
• Teen dating volence
• Sexual violence

Megan C. Kearns, PhD, is a senior behavioral scientist in the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) at CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Her research interests focus on primary and secondary prevention of intimate partner violence, including evaluation of community and policy-based prevention approaches. In her current position, Dr. Kearns is responsible for overseeing evaluation research designed to generate practice-based evidence for the effectiveness of sexual violence prevention efforts being implemented through the Rape Prevention and Education program. She also serves as a subject matter expert on intimate partner violence and teen dating violence and acts as the science officer for multiple CDC-funded research and evaluation projects, including the DELTA FOCUS program.

Prior to joining CDC in 2012, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked on multiple research trials investigating behavioral interventions for trauma and anxiety disorders. She has over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts, government publications, and book chapters on violence and trauma-related research, including DVP’s Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Across the Lifespan: A Technical Package of Programs, Policies, and Practices.

Dr. Kearns received her BA degree in psychology from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and her MS and PhD degrees in Clinical Psychology from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. She completed her predoctoral clinical internship at the Medical College of Georgia and Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, where she specialized in the psychology of women.