Dr. Heather Prime joined the Department of Psychology at York University in 2020, following a CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, McMaster University (with Drs. Andrea Gonzalez and Terry Bennett).
Her research program uses a family-based approach to understanding and supporting socio-emotional and cognitive development in young children, with a focus on family interactions and relationships.
She is interested in risk and resiliency processes that occur involving social disadvantage, caregiver and family wellbeing, and children’s adjustment. Current activities include: (1) The development and evaluation of family-based early intervention programs; (2) Knowledge synthesis activities used to examine pre-existing literature on early family-based interventions; (3) The development of behavioural observation tools for assessing family interaction patterns; and (4) Secondary analysis of pre-existing datasets in order to better understand early childhood development.
Dr. Prime is registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario and she is a practicing clinical psychologist in the Greater Toronto Area, with expertise in working with the family unit to support children’s mental health and well-being. As a clinical psychologist, she is committed to using her clinical training to guide her research, and she emphasizes clinical utility in her research endeavours.