Thea Senger-Carpenter

Thea Senger-Carpenter

Thea Senger-Carpenter , PhD

Research Associate

Biography

Thea Senger-Carpenter is a research associate working with Dr. Natoshia Cunningham. Her work examines the role of sleep in relationships among adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and physical/psychological outcomes during adolescence.¬† A board-certified¬†pediatric nurse practitioner, Thea is also interested in developing scalable behavioral interventions for primary care settings.   Prior to joining the Department of Family Medicine, Thea completed a PhD at the University of Michigan School of Nursing and a Master of Science in Nursing from the Yale School of Nursing. Drawing on her experiences in clinical practice, Thea's NIH-funded predoctoral work used longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study to examine how sleep duration and quality affect relationships among early ACE exposure, mental health symptoms, and persistent/recurrent pain across early adolescence.

In the News

Thea Senger-Carpenter

Applying Life History Theory to Understand Earlier Onset of Puberty: An Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Cohort Analysis

This study used baseline data from over 5,000 female youth participating in the national Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to test hypotheses derived from Life History Theory (LHT) that exposure to multigenerational, intergenerational, and individual adversities are associated with earlier pubertal onset.