Justin Rasmussen CV

I am a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Duke University and a von der Heyden Global Fellow at the John Hope Franklin Center. My research focuses on how community, social, and cultural systems shape mental health risk, promotion, and intervention. I am especially interested in using clinical evidence to develop multilevel interventions that support individual mental health by strengthening families, institutions, and communities.

As a part of Dr. Eve Puffer’s Global Mental Health Lab, I have helped to develop, adapt, implement, and evaluate interventions in the US, Kenya, Liberia, and South Africa. My primary focus has been on a multilevel intervention in Eldoret, Kenya targeting family-level processes key to child mental health outcomes. My dissertation research describes how lay counselors providing in-home family counseling fit within and change families’ existing social support networks. 

I grew up in Tanzania and Kenya and got my bachelor’s degree in psychology from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. After graduating, I worked with Alex Tsai at Massachusetts General Hospital for two and a half years as an on-site project coordinator for a longitudinal microenterprise, water security, health, and social network study in Mbarara, Uganda.