Shannon Savell, PhD

For Patients:
My research program focuses on how to best support family relationships to promote mental health and well-being for every member of the family system.

For Referring Providers:
My research program focuses on promoting women’s mental and physical health during pregnancy, postpartum, and early parenthood through relational interventions. My current and future work seeks to: (1) examine how relational interventions to promote women’s health can be more easily implemented and disseminated (e.g., from maternal fetal medicine, OBGYN, or family medicine clinics, NICU); and 2) identify the psychological (relational functioning, depressive/anxiety symptoms) and biological (e.g., neuropeptide hormones such as oxytocin and stress hormones such as cortisol) mechanisms of intervention change, explore comparative effectiveness across formats (e.g., group, individual, app-based) and identify for whom and when relational interventions are best delivered. My long-term career objective is to develop relational interventions that are evidence-based, scalable, accessible, and cost-effective to support the mental and physical health of the whole family system through targeting the relationship system as a unique risk and protective factor.