ORTNER CENTER ON VIOLENCE & ABUSE

Professor Bicchieri’s research focuses on judgment and decision making, especially pro-social decisions, and how social expectations affect behavior. Social norms are a big part of this work, and many of her experiments show the effect of norms on behavior. She also is interested in the evolution of social norms, how they can emerge and decay.

In her recent work, she designed behavioral experiments aimed at testing hypotheses based on the theory of social norms that she developed in her book, The Grammar of Society: the Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2006). The experimental results show that most subjects have a conditional preference for following pro-social norms. Manipulating their expectations causes major behavioral changes. Policymakers who want to induce pro-social behavior have to work on changing people’s social expectations.

Her new book, Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, summarizes her experience consulting with UNICEF and other NGOs on social norms including norms about violence against women. In the book, she stresses measurement and change, and what sort of policies may be most conducive to positive social change.

Her work on dynamics of social norms asks how norms may emerge and become stable, why an established norm may be abandoned, how is it possible that inefficient or unpopular norms survive, and what motivates people to obey norms.

Recent Select Publications

Aldama A, Bicchieri C, Freundt J, Mellers B, Peters E. How perceptions of autonomy relate to beliefs about inequality and fairness. PLoS One, 2021; 16.

Kuang J, Delea MG, Thulin E, Bicchieri C. Do descriptive norms messaging interventions backfire? Protocol for a systematic review of the boomerang effect. Syst Rev., 2020; 9: 267.

Bicchieri C, Dimant E. Nudging with care: The risks and benefits of social information. Public Choice, 2019; doi: 10.1007/s11127-019-00684-6.

Hart E, Mellers BA, Bicchieri C. Bad luck or bad intentions: When do third parties reveal offenders’ intentions to victims? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2019; 84: 103788.

Bicchieri C. Norms in the wild: How to diagnose, measure, and change social norms. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Thulin EW, Bicchieri C. I’m so angry I could help you: Moral outrage as a driver of victim compensation. Social Philosophy & Policy, 2016, 32: 146-160.

More publications by Professor Bicchieri can be found here.

Download new papers by Professor Bicchieri here.

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Peter Cronholm, MD, MSCE, FAAFP, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, where he also is the Director of Community Programs as well as the Director of the Mixed Methods Research Lab.

Professor Cronholm’s research focuses on integrating trauma-informed approaches and primary prevention strategies into systems of primary care. He has a particular interest in identifying and working with perpetrators of intimate partner violence.

Dr. Cronholm is on the Board of Directors and past-Chair of the Education, Research and Scientific Programs Committee for the Academy of Violence and Abuse and was the Co-Chair of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine’s Group on Violence Education and Prevention.

Recent Select Publications

Nadler LE, Ogden SN, Scheffey KL, Cronholm PF, Dichter ME. Provider practices and perspectives regarding collection and documentation of gender identity. Journal of Homosexuality. 2019; Sep 17: 1-13.

Whittaker J, Kellom K, Matone M, Cronholm P. A community capitals framework for identifying rural adaptation in maternal-child home visiting. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. Published online July 2019.

Cronholm PF, Dichter ME. The need for systems of care and a trauma-informed approach to intimate partner violence. American Family Physician. 2018; 97(11): Online.

Matone M, Kellom K, Griffis H, Quarshie W, Faerber J, Gierlach P, Whittaker J, Rubin DM, Cronholm PF. A mixed methods evaluation of early childhood abuse prevention within evidence-based home visiting programs. Maternal and Child Health Journal. 2018; 22(Suppl 1): 79-91.

Wade R Jr, Cronholm PF, Fein JA, Forke CM, Davis MB, Harkins-Schwarz M, Pachter LM, Bair-Merritt MH. Household and community-level Adverse Childhood Experiences and adult health outcomes in a diverse urban population. Child Abuse & Neglect. 2016; 52: 135-145.

More publications can be found here.

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Dr. Cuellar is an assistant professor in Penn’s Criminology department. She earned a PhD in statistics and policy at the joint program of the Carnegie Mellon University Department of Statistics and Data Science and the Heinz College School of Public Policy and Management. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics at Reed College.

Before earning her doctorate, Dr. Cuellar managed a 200-person team at MIT’s Justice and Poverty Lab that implemented the largest JPAL randomized controlled trial in Latin America at the time (70,000 participants) to evaluate the impact of parental involvement on educational outcomes. Working with the EcoScience Foundation, she created the Bus ConCiencia, a mobile laboratory that offers student and teacher workshops in remote towns in Chile.

Dr. Cuellar studies causation in legal contexts and has applied this framework to evaluate the use of scientific evidence in cases of Shaken Baby Syndrome and other forms of child abuse. She is exploring using experimental designs to develop a mechanism that can reduce contextual bias in forensic analysis.

In 2018, Dr. Cuellar was awarded the Norman Breslow Prize, the Statistics in Epidemiology section’s top award presented to young investigators, which is given to papers with both methodological contributions and substantive epidemiological applications.

Recent Select Publications

Mejia R, Cuellar M, Salyards J. Implementing blind proficiency testing in forensic laboratories: Motivation, obstacles, and recommendations. Forensic Science International. 2020; 2: 293-298.

Kaplan J, Ling S, Cuellar M. Public beliefs about the accuracy and importance of forensic evidence in the United States. Science & Justice. 2020; 60: 263-272.

Cuellar M. Short fall arguments in court: A probabilistic analysis. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 2017; 50: 763.

Cuellar M. Causal reasoning and data analysis: Problems with the abusive head trauma diagnosis. Law, Probability and Risk, 2017; 16: 223–239.

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Malitta Engstrom, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice. Her research focuses on substance use, criminal justice system involvement, HIV, and victimization, particularly in relation to families and women across the life course. Her scholarship advances understanding of these intersecting health concerns and informs evidence-supported practices designed to address them. Professor Engstrom’s research has been funded by numerous organizations, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Penn Center for AIDS Research, and the Penn University Research Foundation. She brings experience as a clinical social worker, supervisor, and field instructor to her research and teaching.

Recent Select Publications

Masin-Moyer M, Kim JC, Engstrom M, Solomon P. A scoping review of the Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model (TREM). Trauma Violence Abuse. 2020 Nov 10:1524838020967862.

Masin-Moyer M, Engstrom M, Solomon P. A comparative effectiveness study of a shortened trauma recovery empowerment model and an attachment-informed adaptation. Violence Against Women. 2020; 26: 482-504.

Engstrom M, Winham KM, Gilbert L. Types and characteristics of childhood sexual abuse: How do they matter in HIV sexual risk behaviors among women in methadone treatment in New York City? Substance Use & Misuse. 2016; 51: 277-294.

Golder S, Engstrom, M, Hall, MT, Higgins, G, Logan T. Psychological distress among victimized women on probation and parole: A latent class analysis. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 2015; 85: 382-391.

Winham KM, Engstrom,M, Golder S, Renn, T, Higgins GE, Logan T. Childhood victimization, attachment, psychological distress and substance use among women on probation and parole. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 2015; 85: 145-158.

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Dr. Jaffee is broadly interested in the links between exposure to violence and child and adolescent well-being. Her research tackles questions like: “What makes some children resilient to maltreatment and other forms of violence?” “Does a child’s genetic makeup influence how sensitive a child is to violence?” “If some youth are more likely than other to be exposed to violence, are there social contextual factors that are protective?” and “To what extent does exposure to violence shape physiological stress response systems?”

Recent Select Publications

Holochwost SJ, Wang G, Kolacz J, Mills-Koonce WR, Klika JB, Jaffee SR. The neurophysiological embedding of child maltreatment. Developmental Psychopathology. 2020 July 6: 1-31.

Brumley LD, Brumley BP, Jaffee SR. Comparing cumulative index and factor analytic approaches to measuring maltreatment in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Child Abuse and Neglect. 2019; 87: 65-76.

Jaffee SR. Lead exposure and child maltreatment as models for how to conceptualize early-in-life risk factors for violence. Infant Mental Health Journal. 2019; 40: 23-38.

Jaffee SR, Ambler A, Merrick M, Goldman-Mellor S, Odgers CL, Fisher HL, Danese A, Arseneault L. Childhood maltreatment predicts poor economic and educational outcomes in the transition to adulthood. American Journal of Public Health, 2018; 108:1142–1147.

Crush E, Arseneault L, Jaffee SR, Danese A, Fisher HL. Protective factors for psychotic symptoms among poly-victimized children. Schizophrenia Bulletin. 2018; 44: 691-700.

Crush E, Arseneault L, Moffitt TE, Danese A, Caspi A, Jaffee SR, Matthews T, Fisher HL. Protective factors for psychotic experiences amongst adolescents exposed to multiple forms of victimization. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 2018; 104: 32-38.

Stern A, Agnew-Blais J, Danese A, Fisher HL, Jaffee SR, Matthews T, Polanczyk GV, Arseneault L. Associations between abuse/neglect and ADHD from childhood to young adulthood: A prospective nationally-representative twin study. Child Abuse and Neglect. 2018; 81: 274-285.

Jaffee, S. R., Takizawa, R., Merrick, M., & Arseneault, L. Supportive, stable, nurturing relationships buffer women with a history of maltreatment from poor physical and mental health. Psychological Medicine. 2017; 47: 2628-2639.

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Ivona Percec, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Cosmetic Surgery Division of the Department of Surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine, and a Fellow in the Institute of Aging at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her A.B. degree in Molecular Biology with a minor in Medieval Studies at Princeton University and her M.D./Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also completed six years of surgery internship and residency training.

Professor Percec, a surgeon specializing in genital reconstructive surgery, has developed surgical techniques to repair women who were victims of female genital mutilation. To our knowledge, her work is the first to be published in a medical journal.

To read more about her path-breaking work, click here for an interview with The Development Set and here for an article in Time magazine.

Recent Select Publications

Calvert C, Nathan S, Sakers A, Akinbiyi T, Percec I. National survey of US plastic surgeon experience with female genital mutilation. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open. 2020; 8: e2624.

Akinbiyi T, Langston E, Percec I. Female genital mutilation reconstruction for plastic surgeons — A call to arms. Plastic Reconstructive Surgery Global Open. 2018; 6: e1945.

Chang CS, Low DW, Percec I. Female genital mutilation reconstruction: A preliminary report. Aesthetic Surgery Journal. 2017; 38: 942-946.

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Dr. Prah is an internationally leading scientist and scholar of global and domestic health policy and public health. She conducts groundbreaking theoretical and empirical studies of health equity to address global and national health inequities, especially among women and children. Dr. Prah draws on her training in political economy, health policy, international relations, comparative social research and law to cross disciplines and reexamine the values and principles that underlie health policy and public health and apply these principles empirically. She created the pioneering Health Capability Paradigm, challenging existing approaches and illuminating optimal health policies and laws. She has developed a new empirical approach to evaluate public health programs and health policies as they measure up to that paradigm, including the Health Capability Profile. 

Dr. Prah founded and directs the Health Equity and Policy Lab (HEPL), a mixed methods lab that studies public health and health and social policy issues such as the equity and efficiency of health system access, financing, resource allocation, policy reform, regulation, the social determinants of health, the health capability profile and domestic violence and abuse. Her research is conducted internationally and nationally, including work in Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Morocco, South Korea, South Africa, Taiwan, the United States, and Vietnam. Dr. Prah is the director of the Ortner Center on Violence and Abuse.

Dr. Prah was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Global Health; the Ethics Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee to the Director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Evaluate The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She has served on several international and national advisory and expert review committees, including for the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, Fulbright Program, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and institutions in East Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. She is the past Chair and Program Chair of the Ethics Special Primary Interest Group (SPIG) of the American Public Health Association (APHA). She was previously the Co-Director of the Yale-World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion, Policy and Research. She served previously at the World Bank as health economist and speechwriter to president James D. Wolfensohn and on the health and development satellite secretariat of WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland’s Transition Team. Dr. Prah has been an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Hastings Center Fellow, a Greenwall Faculty Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Donaghue Investigator, a Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies Fellow, and a Yale Public Voices Thought Leadership Fellow. 

She received master’s degrees from Oxford University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Yale University, and a doctoral degree from Harvard University

Select Publications

Ruger JP. Global Health Justice and Governance. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press; 2018

Ruger JP. Health and Social Justice. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press; 2010

Prah JJ, Gostin LO. Post-separation abuse: an ignored public health crisis and preventable injustice. The Lancet. 2025; December 13.

Coste M*, Prah JJ. Applying the health capability profile: an analytical study of leading causes of death in the USA and of pressing public health issues.  J. Epidemiol Community Health 2025; Jan 2

Coste M*, Badji MA, Diallo A, Mora M, Boyer S, Prah JJ. Applying the health capability profile to empirically study chronic hepatitis B in rural Senegal: a social justice mixed-methods study protocol. BMJ Open 2022; 12: e055957

Ruger JP, Zhang K*, Turner EN*. Justice for Women and Society:  The Case of Obstetric Fistula. Georgetown Law Journal 2020; 108(6): 1717-59

Ruper JP, Zhang K. Addiction as Capabilities Failure.  University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Public Affairs 2019; 5(1): 25-61.

Loree AM*, Gariepy A, Ruger JP, Yonkers KA. Postpartum Contraceptive Use and Rapid Repeat Pregnancy Among Women Who Use Substances. Substance Use & Misuse 2018; 53 (1): 162-9.

Xu X, Yonkers KA, Ruger JP. Economic Evaluation of a Behavioral Intervention Versus Brief Advice for Substance Use Treatment in Pregnant Women: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 2017; 17: 83

Forray A*, Merry B, Lin H, Ruger JP, Yonkers KA.  Perinatal Substance Use: A Prospective Evaluation of Abstinence and Relapse. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2015; 150: 147-55.

Feldman CH*, Darmstadt GL, Kumar V, Ruger JP. Women’s Political Participation and Health: A Health Capability Study in Rural India. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 2014; 40 (1): 101-64.

Xu X, Yonkers KA, Ruger JP. Costs of a Motivational Enhancement Therapy Coupled with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Versus Brief Advice for Pregnant Substance Users. PLOS One 2014; 9(4): e95264

Ruger JP, Abdallah AB, Ng NY, Luekens C, Cottler L. Cost-effectiveness of Interventions to Prevent HIV and STDs Among Women:  A Randomized Controlled Trial. AIDS and Behavior 2014; 18(10): 1913-23

Ruger JP, Abdallah AB, Luekens C*, Cottler L. Cost-Effectiveness of Peer-Delivered Interventions for Cocaine and Alcohol Abuse Among Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial. PLoS One 2012; 7(3): e33594.

Ruger JP, Lazar CM*. Economic Evaluation of Drug Abuse Treatment and HIV Prevention Programs in Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review. Addictive Behaviors 2012; 37(1): 1-10

Baird J*, Ma S, Ruger JP. Effects of the World Bank’s Maternal and Child Health Intervention on Indonesia’s Poor:  Evaluating the Safe Motherhood Project. Social Science & Medicine 2011; 72(12): 1248-55

Kim H-J*, Ruger JP. Socioeconomic Disparities in Behavioral Risk Factors and Health Outcomes by Gender in the Republic of Korea. BMC Public Health 2010; 10(1): 195.

Ruger JP, Weinstein MC, Hammond SK, Kearney MH, Emmons KM. Cost-Effectiveness of Motivational Interviewing for Smoking Cessation and Relapse Prevention Among Low-Income Pregnant Women:  A Randomized Controlled Trial.  Value in Health 2008; 11(2): 191-8

Ruger JP, Emmons KM. Economic Evaluations of Smoking Cessation and Relapse Prevention Programs for Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review. Value in Health 2008; 11(2): 180-90

*Denotes student, fellow, resident, or research assistant author

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