Associate Professor, Departments of Ob-Gyn & Psychiatry
University of Colorado School of Medicine
2015 Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Schizophrenia Research (Maltz Prize)
Dr. Hoffman’s research into the fetal origins of mental illness, including schizophrenia, ADHD and autism, seeks to understand how positive and negative factors in human pregnancy influence maternal health, and critical periods of fetal and early childhood brain development based on evidence that some neurodevelopmental disorders manifest decades after a trajectory of abnormal brain development begins in utero. Dr. Hoffman has championed a partnership between the obstetrics and psychiatry departments, and modeled new methods of fetal ultrasound, fetal physiology, and in utero stress hormone exposure to directly assess the mechanisms by which these factors contribute to an increased risk of fetal programming of mental illness. Her goal is to find pregnancy interventions that will improve maternal-child mental health outcomes for women and their children.
