Hannah C. Espeleta is Research Assistant Professor within the College of Nursing at the Medical University of South Carolina. She is a licensed clinical psychologists and is nationally certified in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. Dr. Espeleta earned her B.A. at Miami University of Ohio and earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Oklahoma State University, with an emphasis on child psychology, pediatric psychology, and statistics. She completed her predoctoral clinical internship at the Charleston Consortium within the Trauma Track and her postdoctoral fellowship at MUSC in the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center and the College of Nursing. Dr. Espeleta provides clinical supervision, treatment services, and training at MUSC to implement evidence-based mental health assessment and treatment for children and adults exposed to trauma who are enrolled in the Trauma Resilience and Recovery Program (TRRP).
Dr. Espeleta's research initiatives surround the development, evaluation, and scaling of trauma-focused evidence-based interventions to improve access and quality of care. She is interested in the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices within youth-serving agencies, such as child welfare, to enhance the sustainment of practices and reach of interventions to families in need. The goal of her program of research is to improve health and service outcomes for children and families with histories of trauma by developing and testing novel approaches to improve implementation and scalability of evidence-based practices in community settings. She currently serves as a research co-mentor for predoctoral clinical interns.
Dr. Espeleta was a previous Doris Duke Fellow and trainee in the Interdisciplinary Training Program for Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is actively involved in the Doris Duke Professional Network for Child Well-Being, serving as the Co-Chair of the Mentorship Committee and a Group Facilitator for the Qualitative Methods Affinity Group.