She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology– San Francisco, an APA-accredited program after completing an APA-accredited internship at Bellevue Hospital/New York University. Dr. Cavanaugh completed two postdoctoral fellowships, both of which were funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and focused on substance abuse prevention and drug dependence epidemiology, at Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities. She joined the faculty at Rutgers University—Camden in 2010.