Dr. Erika Obikane
Senior Researcher and Board-Certified Pediatrician
Dr. Erika Obikane is a Senior Researcher and board-certified pediatrician at the Department of Social Medicine, National Center for Child Health and Development (NCCHD), Tokyo, Japan. After working as a pediatrician at several hospitals, she obtained an MPH from the Department of Public Health at the University of Tokyo and a PhD in Social Medicine (Department of Mental Health) in 2021. She subsequently served as Project Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo before joining NCCHD in 2022, where she was appointed Senior Researcher in 2023 and selected as an Excellent Researcher of the center in 2025.
Her research focuses on perinatal and family mental health, fatherhood, and the development and implementation of maternal and child health risk assessment tools in collaboration with the Children and Families Agency of Japan. She has developed and evaluated digital mental health programs, including internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) for paternal perinatal depression (iDadCare), and has conducted studies on child abuse prevention, child health, and parental mood disorders. She also leads the Japanese team in the Wellcome Trust-funded international collaboration on digital interventions for child anxiety (OSI global project).
She has received multiple awards and competitive grants, including the University of Tokyo Graduate School Outstanding Research Award (2017), the Seseragi Foundation Research Award (2018), and KAKENHI Start-up and Young Researcher grants, as well as government-funded maternal and child health research grants. She is frequently invited to speak at national symposia and government training workshops for maternal and child health leaders.
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