Research Expertise:

• Foster care and kinship care 
• Child abuse and neglect
• Child mental/behavioral health
• Grandparents raising grandchildren 

Teaching Expertise:

• Research methods  
• Program evaluation
• Human behaviors and the social environment
• Child welfare policy and service 

Background

Associate Professor Yanfeng Xu joined the College of Social Work faculty in 2019 after earning her Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Maryland School of Social Work. She is currently an affiliate faculty associate with the USC Center for School Behavioral Health and the Walker Institute of International and Area Studies. She is also a fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research.

Dr. Xu’s research has received support from the National Institutes of Health; the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences; the Duke Endowment; the South Carolina Center for Rural and Primary Health Care; the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services; the Southeastern Conference; and multiple USC, including ASPIRE I, ASPIRE II, EXCEL, Racial Justice and Equity, the USC Walker Institute, and College of Social Work faculty grants.

Her research centers on improving the well-being (e.g., mental health, physical health, and educational outcomes) of children involved in the child welfare system and their families. Dr. Xu’s recent projects include KinCarolina, which supports kinship families through a comprehensive intervention, and S.T.A.R.T.T-A.I., which enhances trauma-informed mental health services for system-involved children by training mental health providers. In addition, Dr. Xu’s work advances child welfare system development and workforce capacity building at both local and international levels.

To date, Dr. Xu has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, 30 as first author. Her scholarship appears in leading journals such as Child Abuse & Neglect, Child Maltreatment, and Children and Youth Services Review. She currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and Frontiers in Psychology, and is a member of the editorial board for Research on Social Work Practice. She is also a co-chair of the Adolescent and Youth Development Cluster, the Society for Social Work and Research Conference.