Dr. Deborah J Jones

The principal investigator of the Family FIRST lab, Dr. Deborah Jones, is a Clinical Psychologist and Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). She received her B.S. in Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, MA in Counseling Psychology at Loyola College in Baltimore, she did her clinical intership at the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium, and earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Georgia. She has been at UNC Chapel Hill since 2004.

As a child clinical psychologist, Dr. Jones’ basic and applied research strives to move the field beyond the identification of “at-risk” to more specific and contextualized models of child and family functioning.  To this end, she has published more than 100 articles exploring patterns of risk and resilience within African American, single mother, and low-income families, as well as mechanisms to explain variability in outcomes of and strategies to increase engagement in evidence-based treatments for at-risk and underserved families.  Dr. Jones’ work in these areas has been consistently funded by federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NIH/NIMH and most recently has been recognized with a 2020 Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Award for Engaged Research.

Dr. Jones considers training and mentoring of graduate students one of the most rewarding aspects of her career. Besides research, Dr. Jones trains doctoral students in the delivery of Behavioral Parent Training for Early Onset Behavior Disorders, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses related to child and family focused psychotherapy as well as digital mental health. She received the 2015 William C. Friday Award for Excellence in Teaching in recognition of her work with graduate and undergraduate students both in and out of the classroom and has received the Clinical Program’s Rosa Swanson Award for contributions to the community and Gallinsky Award by outgoing interns for her clinical supervision.