Centers

Dr. Leslie Davidson’s primary research interests are neurodisability in children, maternity and reproductive care, and the epidemiology and prevention of accidents and violence, particularly intimate partner violence.

Dr. Davidson moved to England in 1992 to work in the National Health Service as Pediatric Epidemiologist in the South East Thames Region and in Southeast London and was senior lecturer in Pediatric Epidemiology and Public Health at King's College, London. In 1997 she became Director of the National Pediatric Epidemiology Unit at Oxford. There she studied the follow-up of at-risk neonates, the organization of maternity care, the cost effectiveness of Artificial Reproductive Technology, and investigated how health services can best assist women experiencing intimate partner violence.

She returned to the U.S. to Columbia’s Mailman School in 2002 and is a senior professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Pediatrics. She is Director of the Center for Child and Family Life Epidemiology. She is senior health advisor to Project THRIVE of the National Center for Children in Poverty, and has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health. She is also a member of the Steering Committee and directs the Dating Violence Program of the Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention. Her current research includes studies of the health and psychosocial needs of children with disability in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and a series of studies of dating violence in young people in New York.

Dr. Davidson is Chair of the Doctoral Committee in Epidemiology, the Co-Chair of the Mailman School of Public Health's Committee on Student Diversity, and a member of the School's Steering Committee. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Royal College of Physicians (London), and the American Epidemiological Society.