Dorian Traube 
Associate Professor of Social Work | USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Dr. Traube focuses on early child development, home visitation, and telehealth solutions for families with young children.
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Biography
DORIAN TRAUBE is an associate professor in the Suzanne Dworak Peck School of Social Work. She developed Parents as Teachers @ USC Telehealth, the first partnership of its kind between a national home visitation model and a university based telehealth clinic. In doing this she also established the first virtual home visitation program, offering an entire home visitation model with fidelity via video conferencing technology. This program was chosen as a Named Commitment by the Clinton Global Initiative and was selected as the winner of the Gary Community Investment/OpenIDEO Early Childhood Innovations Prize. In three years, the program offered over 1000 home visits and trained 25 home visitors in virtual service delivery strategies. This research laid the foundation for a $1.2 million effort, funded by Heising Simons, to make virtual home visitation available nationally during the COVID 19 crisis. Her research agenda focuses on the utilization of technological solutions to provide early childhood health, education, and parent support services. She has expertise in children’s mental health, child maltreatment prevention, family support interventions, and home visitation. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Parsons Foundation, Queenscare Foundation, and the Overdeck Foundation. Dr. Traube sits on the board of directors of Child 360 and the California Emerging Technology Fund.
Dr. Traube received her doctorate and master's degree in social work from Columbia University, and is a licensed clinical social worker in California and New York.
To reference the work of Dorian Traube online, we ask that you directly quote her work where possible and attribute it to "Dorian Traube, a faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)
Education (3)
Columbia University: Ph. D. 2006
Columbia University: M. S. S. W. 2001
University of California, Berkeley: B. A. 1999
Areas of Expertise (6)
Parent Education
Telehealth
Children’s Mental Health
Infant Mental Health
Home Visitation
Child Welfare
Industry Expertise (5)
Telecommunications
Public Policy
Education/Learning
Social Services
Research
Accomplishments (2)
Champion of the Children Award, Drew Child Development Corporation (professional)
2018-04-30
Dorian Traube received the Champion of the Children Award from Drew Child Development Corporation.
Mellon Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students, University of Southern California (professional)
2012
Affiliations (1)
- USC Center for the Changing Family
Links (2)
Media Appearances (5)
Virtual parent education could be a thing of the future
USC News
2016-11-22
“You often hear that in rural environments it is next to impossible to get home visitors out to people’s homes,” said Associate Professor Dorian Traube. “We thought, what if we could deliver home visitation entirely through videoconferencing technology?”...
USC joins Parents as Teachers to deliver online education
USC News
2016-03-31
“This project is a prime example of how preventive health services can be taken into a home setting through telehealth technology,” said Dorian Traube, USC associate professor and lead investigator. “Our hope is that by using the latest in secure, user-friendly technology, more families will have access to critical early intervention services. At the same time, we are opening the doors to communicate with a new generation of families who are surrounded and immersed in technology on a regular basis.”...
EBay becomes latest tech firm to boost parental leave policy
The San Francisco Chronicle
2015-12-04
“Companies are realizing it’s an incredible benefit that keeps employees engaged and really happy,” said Dorian Traube, an associate professor at the USC School of Social Work. “It leads to job retention. It also leads to increasing the presence of women in the workplace.”...
Michael Jackson's kids: Inside their world
People
2007-09-17
Their father’s money troubles aside, there’s also the issue of the veils and masks the Jackson children wear on most public outings—don’t they draw more attention than they deflect? “The primary reason for seeing the children all dressed up like that is for the attention that Michael will get for himself,” says Jackson family confidant and coauthor of Michael Jackson: The Man Behind the Mask Stacy Brown, voicing an opinion shared by others who know Jackson. What’s more, “the masks could send the message to the children that they need to be fearful of people,” says Dr. Dorian Traube, a University of Southern California social worker specializing in adolescent development. “They could end up feeling that there is something wrong with them and that nobody can see them.” And can it be good for the children to travel quite so much? Since abandoning Neverland in 2005, Jackson has hopped the globe, spending time on at least three continents. “The kids are always moving from place to place, and they don’t have any playmates,” says a source close to the Jackson family...
Social Workers Take Their Job Online amid COVID 19
NPR radio
2020-04-15
Dr. Traube discusses her work on virtual home visitation and how it became pivotal to reaching families during COVID 19.
Professional Experience & Partnerships (1)
Virtual Home Visitation
Parents as Teachers National Center
Parents as Teachers @ USC Telehealth was the first virtual home visitation model to be delivered entirely on videoconfrencing technology. It paved the way for virtual adaptations in the early childhood sector
Research Articles & Publications (5)
A national study of risk and protective factors for substance use among youth in the child welfare system
Addictive BehaviorsDorian E. Traube, James, S., Zhang, J., & Landsverk, J.
2012 While child welfare services are intended, in part, to diminish maltreatment's negative impact on adolescents' development, there is evidence that receiving child welfare services affects adolescents' substance use adversely. The literature on the extent and correlates of this problem is still emerging. The present study aims to fill part of this gap by examining the association between baseline psychosocial risk and protective factors on engagement in substance use behavior over a period of 36 months for child welfare involved youth...
Utilizing Social Action Theory as a framework to determine correlates of illicit drug use among young men who have sex with men
Psychology of Addictive BehaviorsDorian E. Traube, Ian W. Holloway, Sheree M. Schrager, & Michele D. Kipke
2012 Young men who have sex with men (YMSM) continue to be at elevated risk for substance use; however, models explaining this phenomenon have often focused on a limited array of explanatory constructs. This study utilizes Social Action Theory (SAT) as a framework to address gaps in research by documenting the social, behavioral, and demographic risk factors associated with illicit drug use among YMSM. Structural equation modeling was used to apply SAT to a cross-sectional sample of 526 men from the Healthy Young Men Study, a longitudinal study of substance use and sexual risk behavior among YMSM in Los Angeles...
Community and individual factors associated with cigarette smoking among young men who have sex with men
Journal of Research on AdolescenceHolloway, I. W., Traube, D. E., Rice, E., Schrager, S. M., Palinkas, L. A., Richardson, J., & Kipke, M. D.
2012 Young men who have sex with men (YMSM) have higher rates of cigarette smoking than their heterosexual counterparts, yet few studies have examined factors associated with cigarette smoking among YMSM. The present study sought to understand how different types of gay community connection (i.e., gay community identification and involvement, gay bar or club attendance) were associated with smoking among YMSM recruited through venue-based sampling in Los Angeles, California (N = 526). Structural equation modeling was used to isolate direct and indirect effects of gay community connection on smoking through cognitive and psychological mediators (i.e., psychological distress, health values, internalized homophobia). Findings indicate YMSM cigarette smoking prevention and intervention must be tailored to address the direct and indirect influences of the gay community...
Theory development for HIV behavioral health: empirical validation of behavior health models specific to HIV risk
AIDS CareDorian E. Traube, Ian W. Holloway, & Lana Smith
2010 In the presence of numerous health behavior theories, it is difficult to determine which of the many theories is most precise in explaining health-related behavior. New models continue to be introduced to the field, despite already existing disparity, overlap, and lack of unification among health promotion theories. This paper will provide an overview of current arguments and frameworks for testing and developing a comprehensive set of health behavior theories. In addition, the authors make a unique contribution to the HIV health behavior theory literature by moving beyond current health behavior theory critiques to argue that one of the field's preexisting, but less popular theories, Social Action Theory (SAT), offers a pragmatic and broad framework to address many of the accuracy issues within HIV health behavior theory. The authors conclude this article by offering a comprehensive plan for validating model accuracy, variable influence, and behavioral applicability of SAT.
Cross-cultural adaptation of the Child Depression Inventory for use in Tanzania with children affected by HIV
Vulnerable Children and Youth StudiesDorian Traube, Victor Dukay, Sylvia Kaaya, Hector Reyes & Claude Mellins
2009 Understanding the impact of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic is critical for developing appropriate interventions to create supportive environments for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Unfortunately, there are very few studies on the psychosocial wellbeing of children orphaned by AIDS in Africa, and even fewer in Tanzania. It has been difficult to make generalizations across studies and to identify and track children suffering from mental health difficulties, given the lack of culturally sensitive, standardized screening scales and diagnostic procedures. As a contribution to filling that gap, the current study demonstrates the applicability of an existing depression screening instrument (CDI) to evaluate both the needs of OVC as well as the effectiveness of interventions designed to support them.
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