UT professor receives second Fulbright Scholarship

Dr. Michele Knox, a UT professor in the Department of Psychiatry, received a Fulbright Scholarship to visit the Netherlands and find effective ways to improve child abuse prevention in the United States.

Michele Knox, a University of Toledo professor, has received a Fulbright Scholarship to visit Utrecht University in the Netherlands to find ways to improve child abuse prevention in the United States.

During her almost three-week stay, Ms. Knox plans to learn new practices that she can implement in her teaching.

“Their approach to child abuse is multisystemic,” Ms. Knox said. “It’s multidisciplinary. It’s longstanding. It’s not just one standalone program here and there.”

This isn’t the first time she has traveled abroad to learn more about child abuse. Two years ago, the clinical psychologist received her first Fulbright award to visit Portugal and teach professionals about the American Psychological Association’s ACT Raising Safe Kids Program.

This evidence-based child abuse prevention program brings together parents with kids 8 years old or younger to teach them evidence-based parenting skills, Ms. Knox said. It’s the kind of information she wishes she had as a new parent.

“We teach them how to protect kids from violence, how maltreatment happens, and how to protect kids from it,” Ms. Knox said.

She credits a lot of her understanding of child abuse prevention to the APA, where she works with professionals across the United States and 14 other nations, presenting together at conferences and publishing articles.

“It’s really great to learn from what works and doesn't work from those nations and to kind of share not just our successes, but our failures as well,” she said.

She believes the best way to prevent child abuse will involve preparing new parents on how best to do their jobs by providing information that is universally accessible to them.

She hopes to continue learning about the different measures other cultures take as she visits the Netherlands in the spring.

“[I’m] looking forward to immersing my family and myself into their culture and exposing my two daughters to another worldview,” Ms. Knox said.

Contact Areeba Shah at ashah@theblade.com, 419-724-6066, or on Twitter @areebashah.