Megan Hicks earned her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Georgia. Her research broadly focuses on the social-ecological model in order to understand the factors that promote or exacerbate the well-being of vulnerable populations. She is primarily interested in community and contextual factors that influence sexual risk behaviors among minority adolescents, specifically looking at how high-quality relationships serve as protective processes. Hicks has secondary research interests in prevention/intervention programming and program evaluation. As a postdoctoral fellow, will begin new collaborative projects examining violence prevention among adolescents.