Denise Hallfors, PhD, Social Welfare Policy
Senior Research Scientist
Chapel Hill Center
Chapel Hill, N. Carolina

Phone: (919) 265-2612
Fax: (919) 265-2659
Email: hallfors@pire.org


Denise Hallfors is a Senior Research Scientist at PIRE. Her current areas of expertise include Health Policy, HIV prevention, adolescent orphans and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, young adult sexuality and union formation, and substance abuse program/policy evaluation. Dr. Hallfors holds a Masters in Psychiatric Nursing from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in Social Welfare Policy from the Heller School at Brandeis University, where she was an NIMH Health Services Research Fellow, specializing in the economics of health and mental health policy.

Dr. Hallfors is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) on an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial in rural Zimbabwe to test whether maintaining adolescent orphan girls in school prevents HIV risk behaviors. She is also a Co-Investigator and Senior Advisor on a similar study in western Kenya. Both studies have been well implemented with high subject retention despite turbulent political and economic conditions. Findings from the Zimbabwe study indicate that school support significantly increased years of schooling, cut the risk of child marriage in half, and improved quality of life. Additional analyses found the intervention to be cost effective. Dr. Hallfors also serves as a co-Investigator on an NICHD Add Health study (PI: Carolyn Halpern) to examine sexual trajectories from adolescence to young adulthood. Dr. Hallfors is focusing specifically on race and gender differences in marriage and cohabitation patterns.

Prieviously, Dr. Hallfors was the PI of a large NIDA-funded randomized controlled trial of Reconnecting Youth, a school-based program for high risk high school students. This and other work has shaped her interest in environmental, contextual, and structural interventions to prevent youth risk behaviors. A proponent of independent real world tests of interventions, she conducted a feasibility study of the Suicide Screening Program in 10 Reconnecting Youth high schools and proposed adaptations for a better fit within the school context. She also led a NIDA-funded R01 examining pathways to HIV and other STIs among U.S. adolescents and young adults using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Sixteen peer reviewed papers were published from that study, including seminal papers on the temporal pathways between adolescent depression and sexual and drug use behaviors, and the paradox of racial HIV/STD disparities.

Dr. Hallfors has also led two studies funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine the diffusion of evidence-based drug and alcohol prevention programs in schools. She won a FIRST Award from NIDA in 1996 to evaluate the impact of community substance abuse prevention programs on youth by meta-analyzing school surveys. She won the 2003 Douglas S. Leathar Award from the editors of Health Education Research: Theory and Practice for her innovative policy publication on this topic. She was lead author on a Zimbabwe study paper that was selected as a "Paper of the Year" by the American Journal of Public Health for 2011. She served for four years on the Board of Directors of the Society for Prevention Research and she currently serves as a staff member of the PIRE Board of Directors. Before joining PIRE, Dr. Hallfors was a Research Associate Professor in the School of Public Health, Department of Maternal and Child Health (MCH), UNC-Chapel Hill, where she taught core graduate courses in evaluation. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in the MCH Department.