Kathleen A. VandenBerg, Ph.D. Obituary

Kathleen “Kathy” Anne Straus was born on January 6, 1945 in San Francisco. Kathy was the
eldest of five children born to Bernice and William Straus. She grew up in the East Bay of the
San Francisco Bay Area and was educated in Catholic schools. As a teenager, she spent summers
working at her father’s restaurant in Lake Tahoe. She graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in Philosophy.

In 1970, Kathy married the love of her life, Ronald “Ron” VandenBerg. They raised two children, Jonathan and Megan, in Cupertino, California. Kathy and Ron enjoyed outings with their family, evenings with friends, and traveling together.

Kathy had a distinguished and multifaceted career as a neonatal development specialist, author, and trainer of professional caregivers in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for premature babies. She provided individualized family-centered developmental care for infants and families for more than 30 years. Her focus was high-risk newborns who may have experienced altered brain pathway development due to unexpected and overwhelming sensory input in the intensive care nursery. In her last position, she was the Academic Administrator in the Department of Pediatrics (Neonatology) at UCSF and Center Director of the West Coast Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP) and Assessment of Preterm Infants’ Behavior (APIB) Training Center, where she was a NIDCAP Master Trainer.

Kathy and Ron retired to Oregon in 2015 to be near their daughter and her family. Kathy loved spending time with her granddaughter. Kathy is survived by her husband of fifty-four years, Ron, her children, Jonathan and Megan, her son-in-law, Justin, and her granddaughter, Leah.