Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center

Members

O’Connor, Mary

Research

Association between prenatal alcohol exposure and child socio-emotional development

Appointments

  • Director, UCLA Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Clinic
  • Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
  • Program Director, ABC Child Partial Outpatient Program
  • Training Director, Tarjan Center for Developmental Disabilities

Biography

Dr. O’Connor’s current work examines psychosocial and psychiatric risk due to prenatal alcohol exposure. Dr. O’Connor has conducted research on the prevention of alcohol consumption in pregnant women, intervention with children with prenatal alcohol exposure, and medical and allied health education on prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

All of her work has focused on collaborative national initiatives with the long-term goal of developing best practice models to be disseminated on local, state, and national levels.

The overarching emphasis of Dr. O’Connor’s research career has been the development, evaluation, and dissemination of empirically supported assessment and treatment methods for high-risk children.

Publications

  1. Turner, ML, Smits, TC, Liaw, TS, Honick, B, Shirey, B, Choy, L et al.. HuBMAP Data Portal: a resource for multimodal spatial and single-cell data of healthy human tissues. Nat Commun. 2026;17 (1):. doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-77835-z. PubMed PMID:42971971 .
  2. Markiewitz, ND, O'Connor, MJ, Liu, H, Penney, C, Ludomirsky, A, Dewitt, A et al.. Greater Neighborhood Resources Predict Reduced In-Hospital Death for Children With Heart Failure and Cardiomyopathy. J Am Heart Assoc. 2026; :e051324. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.126.051324. PubMed PMID:42924833 .
  3. Hardi, J, O'Connor, MJ, Martínez-Romero, M, Rosario, JG, Fisher, SA, Musen, MA et al.. Automated standardization of legacy biomedical metadata using an ontology-constrained LLM agent. J Biomed Inform. 2026;184 :105116. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2026.105116. PubMed PMID:42918280 .
  4. Auerbach, SR, Anton, K, Bansal, N, Bogle, C, Boucek, K, Cantor, RS et al.. Impact of ventricular assist device use on pediatric heart transplant outcomes in a linked cohort of the Advanced Cardiac Therapies Improving Outcomes Network (ACTION) and Pediatric Heart Transplant Society (PHTS) databases. J Heart Lung Transplant. 2026; :. doi: 10.1016/j.healun.2026.09.027. PubMed PMID:42826812 .
  5. O'Connor, MJ, Martin, M, Trinder, SM, Barbaric, D, Hanna, D, Lai, CY et al.. Optimising Asparaginase Use and Managing Hypersensitivity in Australasia-A Clinical Practice Guideline From the Australian and New Zealand Children's Haematology/Oncology Group. J Paediatr Child Health. 2026;62 (10):1913-1920. doi: 10.1111/jpc.70531. PubMed PMID:42572987 PubMed Central PMC13671243.
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