IBS Associations
Environment and Society Program
Research Affiliate, Natural Hazards Center
Brief Biography
Courtney Welton-Mitchell is trained as a social psychologist and a mental health clinician. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, where she directs the Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response certificate offerings. She is also a Research Associate with the Natural Hazards Center, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. Through the Hazards Center, she administers the Mitigation Matters research program and provides training inputs for the NSF-funded Converge initiative. She is a current Fulbright Scholar Ambassador (2020-2022) and former Fulbright Scholar (2017-2018). She co-founded the Humanitarian Assistance Applied Research Group at the University of Denver and was the Director from 2014-2018. Her research focuses on mental health/public health interventions in disasters and complex humanitarian crises using mixed methods. She has conducted studies on group-based mental health, gender-based violence, and disaster preparedness interventions, including public health messaging campaigns and social norms approaches to attitude and behavioral change. Increasingly, she has turned her attention to understanding psychological and other factors influencing information seeking, risk communication, perception, and behaviors, including in relation to COVID-19. She is a member of the COVID-19 Risk and Social Policy Working Group, and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Public Health Working Group.
