<dl class="profile-info-bio"><dd class="bio-text">Dr. Morrissey's work centers on examining and improving public policies for vulnerable children. She is Associate Professor of public policy at AU, a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute, and a Commissioner on the Washington, DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s Healthy Youth &amp; Schools Commission. Ongoing research examines early care and education policy, family economic instability, and neighborhood poverty. Her work has been published in journals including Pediatrics, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Marriage and Family. <p>From January 2013 to August 2014, Dr. Morrissey was on leave from AU serving as Senior Advisor for Human Services Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She worked primarily on the President's Early Learning Initiative, including Early Head Start and child care. Prior to joining the SPA faculty in 2010, Taryn Morrissey served as a Health Policy Advisor on the staff of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, first for Senator Edward Kennedy and then for Senator Tom Harkin. Dr. Morrissey worked primarily on federal health reform legislation, particularly child and maternal health and workforce issues. She began her career in policy as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) / Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Congressional Fellow.</p> </dd></dl>