Dr. Johanna K.P. Greeson studies young people who age out of foster care and what they need to thrive in adulthood. Her research centers on relational permanence: the enduring connections to caring adults that too many youth lose when they exit the child welfare system. Rather than treating independence as the goal of transition, her work makes the case that interdependence, the ability to draw on and sustain supportive relationships, is what carries them forward. Her work runs on evidence and empathy in equal measure.
She developed Caring Adults ‘R’ Everywhere (C.A.R.E.), a natural mentoring intervention that identifies committed adults already present in a young person’s life and equips them to stay. Youth drive the process: C.A.R.E. begins with their own social networks and their own choices about who takes on the mentoring role. She tested the intervention in a feasibility pilot randomized controlled trial with the Philadelphia Department of Human Services and published the C.A.R.E. treatment manual in 2019 to bring the model into practice.
Her research program spans the wider landscape of child and family well-being. Early in her career, she studied trauma exposure and mental health among children in foster care and residential treatment with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, outcomes of intensive in-home therapy, and low-income homeownership and asset building. At the Field Center, she led a multi-city study of sex trafficking among homeless and runaway youth, and her research examines how states and campuses can support students with foster care experience in higher education. Her international work includes evaluations of family strengthening programs in Kenya, research on mentoring for youth leaving care in Israel, and studies of peer-driven change initiatives in Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines.
A Fellow of the Society for Social Work & Research, Dr. Greeson has been named to the Stanford/Elsevier list of the world’s top 2% of scientists in social work each year since 2021, and in 2026 received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work. Her work has been funded by federal agencies, philanthropic foundations, private donors, and global NGOs. She is a co-author of Understanding Child Welfare (Edward Elgar, 2026) and is writing Making Room for Forever, a book on relational permanence under contract with Oxford University Press. Beyond the academy, she is executive producer of the Field Center’s Aging Out Podcast, has testified before Philadelphia City Council, and delivered a TEDx talk on the aging out crisis.
At Penn, Dr. Greeson serves as Managing Faculty Director of the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice & Research, the University’s only interdisciplinary hub dedicated to child and family well-bein, and directs the Child Well-Being & Child Welfare specialization (CW2) for advanced-year MSW students, mentoring the next generation of child welfare leaders and scholars. She holds a secondary appointment in the Graduate School of Education, earned her PhD in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in child traumatic stress at Duke University School of Medicine, and holds master’s degrees in social service and in law and social policy from Bryn Mawr College. Across research, teaching, and leadership, her commitment is the same: no young person should have to leave care alone, and every one of them deserves someone who stays.
TEDx Talk
C.A.R.E Overview
A Natural Mentoring Intervention for Older Youth in Foster Care
How to heal the aging out crisis
Her TEDx talk is about healing the aging out crisis affecting youth in foster care. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx(opens in a new tab)
A Life in Social Work: Research, Teaching, and Transforming Care: Illuminating the Pathways of Knowledge, Connection, and Change .
