Kristen Slack

Kirsten Slack is a senior scientist at RTI. She is a leading expert on the associations between family poverty (as well as income support) and both child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement. She is also an expert in survey design, program evaluation, randomized-control trials, prevention program design, longitudinal studies, and linking survey and government administrative data. Currently, Dr. Slack serves as a Senior Advisor on the Preliminary Activities to Support Future Data Collection for the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (Reimagining NSCAW). She is also a Senior Advisor on the third National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW III).

In addition to her work at RTI, Dr. Slack is a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a faculty member for 23 years. There, she served twice as the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work Director and for six years as the Principal Investigator for Wisconsin’s Child Welfare Professional Development System. Additionally, she was the Co-Principal Investigator for the school’s Title IV-E Public Child Welfare Training Program for BSW and MSW students for 13 years.

Dr. Slack is an American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare Fellow and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds several professional memberships with the Society for Social Work Research; American Public Health Association; International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect; and the Scientific Learning Collaborative of the Center for Innovation in Child Maltreatment Policy, Research and Training at Washington University.