Norweeta G. Milburn, Ph.D., is a Research Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute Nathanson Family Resilience Center in the Division of Population and Behavioral Health. She received her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). Her research interests include homelessness, substance abuse, mental health and family-based behavioral interventions.
Dr. Milburn has had grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) as a principal investigator or co-investigator. She has lead studies that have examined paths into and out of homelessness, as well as the risk for HIV among homeless youth in the U.S. and Australia; designed and implemented a behavioral intervention for homeless adolescents at risk for HIV and their families; and designed and tested recruitment strategies for behavioral substance abuse interventions. She recently completed a study adapting and testing a behavioral intervention for youth exiting the juvenile justice system and their families. She is the co-Director of a NIDA funded training program, the UCLA HIV/AIDS, Substance Abuse, and Trauma Training Program (HA-STTP). HA-STTP provides training and mentorship for early career ethnic and culturally diverse researchers and post-doctoral scholars to conduct research on reducing substance abuse and HIV transmission in underserved populations at risk for traumatic stress and health disparities. She is the co-Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH) – UCLA Prevention Center of Excellence. She is also Director of the Development Core for the UCLA Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services (CHIPTS). She is a co-investigator for NIMH and Fogarty training grants on trauma and mental health in South Africa (Wyatt/PI) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Adolescent Trials Network (Rotheram-Borus/Swendeman/MPI). She has numerous publications and presentations in the areas of homelessness, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and mental health. She has served as a standing member of NIH peer review committees, and has served as an ad hoc member of NIMH and NIDA peer review committees.
Dr. Milburn is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association (APA). She has been a member of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, and chaired the APA 2009 Presidential Task Force on Psychology’s Contribution to End Homelessness. She is a member of the National Alliance to End Homelessness Research Council. Her honors include being an inaugural member of the Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology, the Community, Culture and Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research, and being an honorary Professor for the Division of Psychotherapy and University of Cape Town Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health.