Kimberly Werner

Dr. Kim Werner has interdisciplinary training in behavioral neuroscience psychology and addiction epidemiology with a focus on the trauma related etiology and the physiological and psychopathological sequelae following traumatic and chronic stress. She earned her doctoral degree in Behavioral Neuroscience Psychology from UMSL and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in transdisciplinary addiction research at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis working with the School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Werner is a research psychologist with research interests in addiction epidemiology and racial disparities in the biopsychosocial risk factors of SUDs. Specifically, Dr. Werner's research focuses on the operationalization of stress exposure integrating multiple levels of stress at the individual (i.e. trauma exposure, discrimination, early substance use), family (i.e. parental psychopathology and parental-offspring relationship), and community (i.e. socioeconomic and neighborhood disadvantage) levels to better understand how acute traumatic and chronic stressors impact psychopathology differentially across race. She continues to collaborate with researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and Brown School of Social Work to address these areas of research. Currently, Dr. Werner serves at Principal Investigator for the Women's Health study examining Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain in Women Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. She is also the Project Director for Tritons United: Against Gender Based Violence a programming grant funded by the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women and a Lead Evaluator for the Emergency Room Enhancement Project. In addition, Dr. Werner developed the Compassion Fatigue training for First Responders. Dr. Werner is working towards developing research projects and protocols as well as programming to apply her expertise in trauma/stress related etiology of substance use disorder (SUD) and psychobiological indicators of PTSD to design and implement culturally competent prevention and intervention programs for trauma, SUDs, and related psychopathology.