Courtney Welton-Mitchell

Courtney Welton-Mitchell, PhD, is trained as a social psychologist and a mental health clinician specializing in traumatic stress. She has worked for several years in complex humanitarian crises, first as a responder and later as a researcher. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, where she directs the certificate in climate and disaster resilience. She is also a research associate with the Natural Hazards Center, Institute for Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a Fulbright Scholar Ambassador and former Fulbright Scholar. She co-founded the Humanitarian Assistance Applied Research Group at the University of Denver and was the Director from 2014-to 2018. Her research focuses on 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 research supporting adaptation to climate change and climate justice. She is the co-Chair of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's Public Health Working Group. In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Denver, she leads annual disaster simulation exercises.