Larissa G. Duncan, PhD

Dr. Duncan received her Ph.D. from the multidisciplinary program in Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State University. With her colleagues from Penn State, Doug Coatsworth, Ph.D. and Mark Greenberg, Ph.D., she developed a conceptual model of mindful parenting that led to creation of a self-report measure of mindful parenting and a mindfulness-based enhancement to an existing, widely used evidence-based prevention program, the Strengthening Families Program: For Parents and Youth 10-14 (SFP). The efficacy of the mindfulness-enhanced SFP is currently being tested in an NIH/NIDA funded R01 randomized controlled trial being conducted with 600 families of young teens.

At UCSF, Dr. Duncan is principal investigator of two studies assessing the impact of mindfulness skills training delivered during the perinatal period. Findings from her recent pilot study of the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) program developed by Nancy Bardacke, CNM, MA, suggest that pregnant women participating in the MBCP program experience reductions in pregnancy-related anxiety, depression, and negative affect and increases in positive affect and mindfulness. With funding from NIH/NCCAM and the Mt. Zion Health Fund, Dr. Duncan is collaborating with Nancy Bardacke, the Centering Healthcare Institute, and the Bay Area CenteringPregnancy Consortium to develop and test a mindfulness enhancement to the CenteringPregnancy group-based model of prenatal healthcare delivery. In a small randomized controlled trial, Dr. Duncan is investigating the effects of the mindfulness-enhanced version of CenteringPregnancy on birth and postpartum outcomes, as well as the potential psychological (perceived stress, coping, emotion, mindfulness) and physiological (neuroendocrine and autonomic) mechanisms of action.