Dr. Houck's research interests focus on adolescent risk behavior, specifically on developing and testing interventions to promote healthy behavior. His current work is focused on testing a tablet-based intervention program designed to prevent dating violence among middle school adolescents as well as translating his lab's efficacious emotion regulation intervention for preventing sexual risk from its original group-based format to a web-based one. His work focuses on the role of emotion regulation in adolescent risk.

Early adolescents are at risk for negative health outcomes due to risk behaviors (e.g., unprotected sex, substance abuse) initiated during this developmental period, and delaying initiation into this risk can have a significant impact on an adolescent's future health. Underlying all of these problems are difficulties with emotion regulation. Emotional reactivity appears to interfere with the use of cognitive skills learned in traditional health education programs, and recent evidence highlights the role of emotion dysregulation in increasing the likelihood of sexual risk behaviors among adolescents. Also, early adolescence is a time when teens are developing their understanding of emotions and their ability to regulate emotion. These findings suggest an important role for an intervention that can reach vulnerable early adolescents to address emotional factors associated with risk situations, such as those involving sex, alcohol, and drugs, in order to reduce risk behaviors. Project TRAC (Talking about Risk and Adolescent Choices) targeted high-risk early adolescents (those who exhibit emotional, behavioral, or substance use risks) at urban middle schools in Providence County, Rhode Island, by comparing two after-school intervention programs: and emotion regulation training program and a more traditional health education program. Results suggested that early adolescents in the emotion regulation intervention were less likely to begin having sex and engaged in less sexual risk behavior over the 30-month follow-up of the project. The goal of finding strategies for disseminating emotion regulation education has led our research team to projects leveraging technology (e.g., virtual reality, tablet-based intervention delivery) for teaching emotion regulation skills as well as assisting a project that will apply emotion regulation strategies to adolescent weight control efforts. In addition, we are using technology strategies to intervene on adolescent dating violence by testing the efficacy of a dyadic, web-based intervention completed by parents and their early adolescent sons. In a separate study, we are using a virtual reality environment to elicit emotion while examining characteristics of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a marker of emotion regulation that may be associated with substance use during early adolescence. We are also currently developing two additional tablet-based interventions that will combine emotion regulation training with health education for adolescents. One will develop a program to integrate emotion regulation and sexual health education, given the prominent role that emotions play in sexual decision making. The other will focus on the interplay of emotion regulation and substance use for young people involved with the child welfare system. 

Co-Investigator, An Affect Management Intervention for Juvenile Offenders. (9/20/04-8/31/06) Larry Brown, PI, Funded by National Institute of Drug Abuse (R21 DA019245).  Total direct costs $275,000.

Principal Investigator, Affect Management Intervention for Early Adolescents with Mental Health Problems. (5/1/07-4/30/10) Funded by National Institute of Mental Health (R34 MH078750). Total direct costs $438,529.

Principal Investigator, GME Curriculum Innovations Targeting the ACGME Competencies of Professionalism and Communication (7/1/08-6/31/09) Funded by the Rhode Island Hospital Graduate Medical Education Committee Grant Award Program. Total award $7499.

Principal Investigator, Delivering Bad News and Other Difficult Conversations: Training Residents to be Better Communicators with Vulnerable Families (7/1/09-6/30/14) Funded by the Hassenfeldt Foundation. Total award $77,500.

Principal Investigator, Preventing HIV through Affect Management for High-Risk Early Adolescents (8/19/09-6/30/14) Funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (R01 NR011906). Total direct costs $1,871,010.

Co-Investigator, Eliciting Affect in Teens in a Virtual World (7/1/10-7/1/11) Wendy Hadley, PI, Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (R41 MH087322- Phase I). Total direct costs $163,849.

Co-Investigator, Community-Based Participatory Research to Develop a School-Based HIV Screening Program (9/15/12-7/31/14) Rebecca Swenson, PI, Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (R21 MH095626). Total direct costs $275,000.                           

Co-Investigator, Reduce the Risk: An Affect Management Program for HIV Prevention (4/1/13-3/31/15) Wendy Hadley, PI, Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (R42 MH087322). Total direct costs $376,731.

Site Principal Investigator, Partner Violence Prevention for Middle School Boys: A Dyadic Web-Based Intervention (1/1/15-12/31/17) Christie Rizzo, PI, Funded by the National Institute of Justice (2014-MU-CX-0002). Total direct costs $538,848.

Site Principal Investigator, Dating Violence Prevention for Juvenile Justice Girls (10/1/16-3/31/20) Christie Rizzo, PI, Funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD080780). Total direct costs $2,730,548.

Co-Investigator, Enhancing Emotion Regulation among Overweight and Obese Adolescents Attempting to Lose Weight (8/15/16-7/31/18) Wendy Hadley, PI, Funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R21 DK108164). Total direct costs $275,000.

Principal Investigator, An Emotion Regulation Intervention for Early Adolescent Risk Behavior Prevention (8/1/17-7/31/19) Christopher Houck, PI, Funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21 HD 089979). Total direct costs $358,886.

Co-Principal Investigator, Dating Violence Prevention Program Focusing on Middle School Boys (8/19/19-5/31/24) Christopher Houck and Christie Rizzo, PIs, Funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD 097126). Total direct costs $2,168,208.

Co-Investigator, Enhancing Emotion Regulation to Support Weight Control Efforts in Adolescents with Overweight and Obesity (9/16/20-6/30/25) Wendy Hadley and Elissa Jelalian, PIs, Funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01 DK 124551). Total direct costs $2,374,540.

Co-Principal Investigator, Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia as a Predictor of Substance Use among Early Adolescents (9/1/21-6/30/26) Christopher Houck and Wendy Hadley, PIs, Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA 050603). Total direct costs $2,288,506. 

Co-Mentor, Developing A Novel Intervention for Addressing Unhealthy Risk-Taking Behaviors among Adolescents with T1D (1/1/22-12/31/22) Rachel Wasserman, PI, Funded by the International Society of Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Total costs $25,000. 

Principal Investigator, An Interactive Education Program to Reduce High Risk Behavior in Adoelscents (9/19/22-8/31/25) Christopher Houck, PI, Funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R42 HD 110333). Total direct costs $807,775.

Co-Investigator, Piloting a Novel Intervention for Helping Teens Manage Everyday Emotional Burdens of Living with Type I Diabetes: The TRAC-D Pilot Study. (11/15/23-11/14/25)  Rachel Wasserman, PI, Funded by the American Diabetes Association.

Co-Principal Investigator, Emotion Regulation Intervention to Prevent Substance Use Among Youth in the Child Welfare System (3/1/24-2/28/26). Christopher Houck and Stephanie Parade, PIs, Funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (R61 DA 059785). Total direct costs $958,215.

Journal of Pediatric Psychology Editorial Board, November 2007-present

Psychology Research Mentor Award, 2016-2017, Alpert Medical School at Brown University Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Director, Clinical Child Psychology Specialty Program- Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium, July 2020- present

Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consorrtium Intern Admissions Committee, August 2011-present

Child Track Coordinator for the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program - Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium, September 2012- June 2020

Pediatric Psychology Internship Co-Coordinator - Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium, July 2014-present

Member, Society of Prevention Research, 2009-10, 2013-present