Elizabeth Norell

Dr. Elizabeth Norell (formerly, Aparicio) is a community-engaged scholar whose work aims to improve health equity through informing and testing mental health and sexual and reproductive health interventions for trauma-affected and marginalized children, youth, and families. Using a trauma-informed care and reproductive justice framework, she has particular expertise in addressing the mental health and sexual and reproductive health needs of youth in and formerly in foster care and youth experiencing homelessness. 

Dr. Norell's current research includes several active funded studies: 

1.    testing a chatbot to reduce maternal and child health disparities (community partners: Hearts and Homes for Youth, multiple clinics);

2.    studying the needs of undergraduate student-parents (community partners: University of Maryland, Florida State University, Montclair State University);

3.    assessing the mental health and sexual health needs of LGBTQ youth in foster care (community partners: Hearts and Homes for Youth, Prince Georges County Department of Social Services); 

4.    developing a "two-gen" sexual health program for foster youth and their caregivers (community partner: Hearts and Homes for Youth); 

5.    examining parenting+mental health supports as a mechanism to reducing intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect among young families (community partner: Hearts and Homes for Youth); and 

6.    disseminating an evidence-based training program for mental health providers serving LGBTQ clients as part of her work with the UMD Prevention Research Center. 

Dr. Norell is a strong advocate for community participation and voice in research, informing the health and social policies and practices that directly affect them. In addition to traditional forms of research dissemination through journals and conferences, she is actively involved in research-to-practice and research-to-policy dissemination work, including conducting community trainings with health and social service organizations, serving as an expert witness in aging out foster youth, and working with the Research to Policy Collaboration to translate child and family health and well-being research for use by federal and state policymakers. 

Dr. Norell directs the Community THRIVES Lab, a group of research-practice partners that conduct Community-engaged Transformative Health Research at the Intersection of family Violence, Early childhood, and adolescent Sexual health intervention. Dr. Norell is the Director of the UMD Prevention Research Center, and a faculty affiliate of the UMD Center for Health Equity and UMD Center on Young Adult Health and Development. Dr. Norell is a fellow in the Society for Social Work and Research and won the 2022 Society for Prevention Research ECPN John B. Reid Early Career Award.

She teaches graduate qualitative research methods and mixed methods research courses, and undergraduate human sexuality, community health, and honors seminar courses. Dr. Norell is a dedicated mentor of undergraduate, MPH, and PhD students, and was selected as a University of Maryland 2020 Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year. She was also awarded the School of Public Health 2021 Doris Sands Excellence in Teaching Award. Dr. Norell has been honored to serve on more than three dozen dissertation committees and MPH project committees. Dr. Norell's scholarly agenda has its foundation in nearly a decade of direct behavioral health practice as a licensed clinical social worker in Maryland and Washington D.C. with trauma-affected children, youth, and families both in foster care and in the general community. 

She served the community in Montgomery County, Maryland and Washington D.C. for many years as an early childhood specialist in direct clinical practice and as an early childhood mental health consultant for preschools, childcare centers, home-based childcare programs, and Early Head Start/Head Start. Dr. Norell is a graduate of Catholic University of America (B.A. and M.S.W.) and University of Maryland (PhD in Social Work). Dr. Aparicio completed HRSA/MCHB-funded predoctoral fellowship training in maternal and child health leadership at the University of Maryland's Center for Public Health Social Work Education and Training. She won the 2022 Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Prior to coming to the University of Maryland, Dr. Norell was an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa School of Social Work.