Katherine Leigh Guyon-Harris, PhD

Guyon-Harris is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Division of General Academic Pediatrics. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and serves as a clinician with University of Pittsburgh Physicians, specializing in infant and early childhood mental health and relationship-based parenting interventions for children birth to age 5. Guyon-Harris earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Michigan State University and completed Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at Eastern Michigan University, earning the Graduate Dean’s Award for Research Excellence for her master’s thesis and two foundation grants for her dissertation. She completed a clinical internship at the Tulane University School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, specializing in infant and early childhood mental health. Guyon-Harris also completed a joint research and clinical postdoctoral fellowship at Tulane, further specializing in infant and early childhood mental health and earning hours for psychology licensure. Following postdoctoral studies at Tulane, Guyon-Harris attended a T32-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics to gain further training in perinatal mental health and substance use in primary care settings.

Guyon-Harris is interested in supporting positive parent-child relationships during the perinatal period through both research and clinical work. She is particularly interested in developing more accessible and acceptable parenting supports for caregivers coping with mental health challenges and other adversities, particularly substance use and trauma. Her research focuses on the origins of parent-child attachment and parenting behavior and the impacts of perinatal mental health and substance use on these processes. Her research contributions have enhanced understanding of the identification of risk for suboptimal parenting behavior during pregnancy, before the child is born, and the impacts of maternal mental health and other forms of early life stress on parent-child relationships and child wellbeing. Guyon-Harris is currently working on securing grant funding to support an adaptation of the empirically supported parenting intervention, the Family Check-Up, for use prenatally with women in recovery from opioid use disorder.

Professional and Scientific Society Memberships:

• Society for Pediatric Research, 2019-Present
• Pennsylvania Association for Infant Mental Health, 2019-Present
• International Congress for Infant Studies, 2013-Present
• Society for Indian (Native American) Psychologists, 2011-Present
• Society for research in Child Development, 2010-Present
• International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, 2011-2016
• Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health, 2010-2018