Name: Brandy Henry
Title: Assistant Professor of Education (Rehabilitation and Human Services)
Department: Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education
Phone: 814-867-5293
Email: BrandyHenry@psu.edu
Office address: 232 CEDAR Building
Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/dr-brandy-henry
Henry comes to the Penn State College of Education from a joint appointment at the Columbia University School of Social Work and Mailman School of Public Health, where she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded Training Program on HIV and Substance Use in the Criminal Justice System. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees in social policy (behavioral health track) from the Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management, where she was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for Health Services Research on Alcohol-Related Problems. She received a master of social welfare degree from the University of California Los Angeles, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology, with minors in statistics and biology, from Boston University.
Henry leverages years of practice experience as a clinical social worker, providing behavioral health services to criminalized populations, to ground her research in the complexity of translating research to inform policy and practice. This background also includes appointments to the Massachusetts Restrictive Housing Oversight Committee, which oversees housing in prisons and jails, and to the board of directors of multiple nonprofits that serve incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.
Her research documents social determinants of incarceration and health disparities of criminalized populations, with a focus on trauma, mental health and substance use disorders. Her research also aims to improve the health of criminalized populations by developing and implementing interventions for these health conditions.