Victim Researcher Profile

BIO

Cynthia Fraga Rizo, PhD, MSW is an Assistant Professor at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work. Dr. Rizo has practice experience providing services to survivors of intimate partner violence and their children. Dr. Rizo has worked on a number of projects in the area of interpersonal violence, including intimate partner violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault. Her primary research focus consists of developing and evaluating interventions for particularly vulnerable survivors of interpersonal violence, including Latinx survivors and youth. Dr. Rizo is currently working on a project to develop school-based sex trafficking content for students as well as protocols that schools can use to connect at risk youth and victims to needed community services. She was a mentee on a CDC funded project (McBee) focused on evaluating campus sexual assault services and developing the next generation of intimate partner violence research. Dr. Rizo teaches MSW courses on human development, confronting racism and institutional discrimination, and research, and provides mentorship to various undergraduate, MSW and PhD students. Dr. Rizo has authored over 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has given over 65 peer-reviewed presentations at local and national conferences. Dr Rizo was also recipient of the 2017 Linda Saltzman New Investigator Award

VICTIMIZATION FOCUS

Child Trafficking and Exploitation, Domestic and Family Violence, Trafficking in Persons

SPECIAL POPULATIONS

Child victims, Formerly incarcerated victims, Limited English proficiency victims, Immigrants and refugees

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Community-based participatory research, Data collection, Descriptive studies, Needs assessment, Program evaluation, Qualitative studies, Quantitative studies, Quasi-experimental studies, Randomized controlled trial

VICTIM RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Community-based participatory research, Data collection, Descriptive studies, Needs assessment, Program evaluation, Qualitative studies, Quantitative studies, Quasi-experimental studies, Training and/or technical assistance