Executive Leadership and Expert Bios

Beverly L. Fortson, PhD

Behavioral Scientist, Research and Evaluation Branch, Division of Violence Prevention

  Areas of Expertise

• Child maltreatment prevention

Beverly L. Fortson, PhD, currently works as a behavioral scientist on the Child Maltreatment and Sexual Violence Team in the Research and Evaluation Branch of the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) in CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Her research interests are in the primary and secondary prevention of child maltreatment, as well as in the utility of interventions for children with trauma exposure and behavior problems. In her current position, she focuses primarily on research examining the effectiveness of parenting interventions in preventing child maltreatment.

Dr. Fortson began her career at CDC in 2008 in DVP as a behavioral scientist. Prior to joining CDC, she was an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina-Aiken in Aiken, South Carolina, where she taught undergraduate and graduate level courses and trained master’s level clinical psychologists.

Dr. Fortson received her BS in psychology from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, and her MA and PhD in Clinical Child Psychology from West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. She completed a predoctoral internship at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

She has provided clinical services to children and families for over 12 years and is a licensed clinical psychologist.