Julia Ruiz Pozuelo, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Julia’s research interests lie at the intersection of psychiatry and development economics. Her work focuses on developing and implementing cost-effective and scalable interventions to treat depression in low-resource settings. She is also interested in the relationship between depression, poverty, and risk-taking among adolescents.
As a postdoctoral fellow, Julia is part of the OptimizeD study, which aims to find the optimal treatment for depression among primary care patients in India.
Julia holds a BSc in Economics from Carlos III University of Madrid, an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Psychiatry from the University of Oxford. Previously, she worked as a Research Analyst at The Brookings Institution and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford. Julia is also a member of the Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Group at the University of Oxford, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, and an honorary researcher in the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
- Moffett, B. D.*, Pozuelo, J. R.*, van Heerden, A., O’Mahen, H. A., Craske, M., Sodi, T., … & Stein, A (2022). Digital delivery of behavioural activation therapy to overcome depression and facilitate social and economic transitions of adolescents in South Africa (the DoBAt study): protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial. BMJ open, 12(12), e065977. doi:10.1136/ bmjopen-2022-065977.
- Graham, C., & Pozuelo, J. R. (2021). Do High Aspirations Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from a Longitudinal Survey of Adolescents in Peru. Journal of Population Economics. doi: 10.1007/s00148-021-00881-y.
- Pozuelo, J. R., Kilford E.J. (2021). Adolescent Health Series: Adolescent Neurocognitive Development in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa. Tropical Medicine & International Health. doi: 10.1111/tmi.13656. PMID: 34270856.
- Pozuelo, J. R., Desborough, L., Stein, A., & Cipriani, A. (2021). Systematic review and meta-analysis: depressive symptoms and risky behaviors among adolescents in low-and middle-income countries. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
- Pozuelo, J. R., Stein, A., Blakemore, S. J., Kahn, K., Dercon, S., & Pettifor, A. (2020). Cash transfers in adolescence: a developmental perspective. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 4(3), 177-178.
- Graham, C., & Pozuelo, J. R. (2017). Happiness, stress, and age: How the U curve varies across people and places. Journal of Population Economics, 30(1), 225-264.