American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare

Emily Putnam-Hornstein, PhD

Active | Inducted in 2024

Bio

Emily Putnam-Hornstein is the John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and faculty co-director of the Children’s Data Network. She also maintains an appointment as a research specialist with the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at UC Berkeley.

For nearly two decades, Putnam-Hornstein has partnered with public agencies to carry out applied research to inform child welfare policy and practice. Her analysis of large-scale, linked administrative data has provided insight into where scarce resources may be most effectively targeted and informs understanding of maltreated children within a broader, population-based context. Her research has been used to develop risk stratification tools, including those implemented in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and Los Angeles County, California. These tools support caseworkers and supervisors in reviewing hundreds of factors relevant to a child’s risk and safety when making initial screening and triaging decisions.

Putnam-Hornstein is the recipient of the Forsythe Award for Child Welfare Leadership from the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators and the Commissioner’s Award from the Children’s Bureau. Her research has been published in journals such as JAMA Pediatrics, Health Affairs, American Journal of Public Health, and Pediatrics. Media coverage of her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and the Netflix documentary “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez.”

Emily graduated from Yale University with a BA in Psychology, received her MSW from Columbia University, and earned her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley.