Nisha Gottfredson O’Shea

Nisha Gottfredson O’Shea is a research public health analyst with RTI’s Substance Use, Prevention, Evaluation & Research Program. She has over 15 years of experience leading NIH-funded research to develop and apply sophisticated modeling approaches to developmental and prevention science.

Dr. Gottfredson O’Shea applies knowledge about developmental etiology to prevent onset or relapse of substance use disorders and related mental and behavioral health problems, particularly for adolescents. She developed a parent-focused preventive intervention for early-onset alcohol use with funding from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). She also leads a NIDA-funded project, studying the role of structural racism in developmental trajectories with a goal of developing policy-level interventions to interrupt these processes.

Dr. Gottfredson O’Shea collaborates on numerous projects to provide statistical support. She has expertise in generalized latent variable models, including item factor analysis and structural equation modeling, multilevel models, and mixture models. She is particularly interested in techniques for analyzing longitudinal data and psychometric analysis. 

Dr. Gottfredson O’Shea works on the following projects: 

• Measuring the Impact of Structural Racism and Discrimination During Adolescences on Substance Use, Psychological Distress, and Criminal Justice Outcomes in Adulthood (Funded by NIDA, MPI)
• Developing a Brief Intervention for Parental Alcohol Socialization to be Delivered by Pediatric Providers: A Feasibility Study (Funded by NIAAA, PI)
• Understanding the Impact of Vaping Prevention Ads on Adolescents and Young Adults (Funded by NCI, Co-I)
• A Micro-Randomized Trial of JITAI Messaging to Improve Adherence to Multiple Weight Loss Behaviors in Young Adults (Funded by NCI, Co-I)
• Impact of E-Cigarette Prevention Messages on Adolescents (Funded by NCI, Co-I)

Before joining RTI in 2022, Dr. Gottfredson O’Shea was an associate professor with tenure in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health. She was also a research scientist for the Center for Development Science and the Frank Porter Graham Research Institute. She was a postdoctoral researcher for Duke University’s Developmental Psychopathology and Transdisciplinary Prevention Research Center. 

Dr. Gottfredson O’Shea has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and holds editorial board positions at multiple scholarly journals.