Position: Distinguished Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University

Board Chair of the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at NYU

Background: Lawrence Aber is Distinguished Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University, where he also serves as board chair of its Institute of Human Development and Social Change.  Dr. Aber earned his Ph.D. from Yale University and an A.B. from Harvard University.  He previously taught at Barnard College, Columbia University and at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, where he also directed the National Center for Children in Poverty.  He is an internationally recognized expert in child development and social policy and has co-edited Neighborhood Poverty: Context and Consequences for Children (1997, Russell Sage Foundation), Assessing the Impact of September 11th 2001 on Children Youth and Parents: Lessons for Applied Developmental Science (2004, Erlbaum) and Child Development and Social Policy: Knowledge for Action (2007, APA Publications).  His basic research examines the influence of poverty and violence, at the family and community levels, on the social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive and academic development of children and youth.  Dr. Aber also designs and conducts rigorous evaluations of innovative programs and policies for children, youth and families, such as violence prevention, literacy development, welfare reform and comprehensive services initiatives.  Dr. Aber testifies frequently before Congress, state legislatures and other deliberative policy forums.  The media, public officials, private foundations and leading non-profit organizations also frequently seek his opinion or advice about pressing matters concerning child and family well-being.  In 2006, Dr. Aber was appointed by the Mayor of New York City to the Commission for Economic Opportunity, an initiative to help reduce poverty and increase economic opportunity in New York City.  In 2007, Dr Aber served as the Nannerl O. Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  In 2008 and 2009, he served part-time as Visiting Research Professor in Evidence-based Social Interventions in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford.  He is also Chair of the Board of Directors of the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa; and serves as consultant to the World Bank on their new project, “Children and Youth in Crisis”.  From 2003-2006, Dr. Aber chaired the Advisory Board, International Research Network on Children and Armed Conflict of the Social Science Research Council, in collaboration with the Special Representative to the Secretary General of the United Nations on Children and Armed Conflict and UNICEF.    Currently, he conducts research on the impact of poverty and HIV/AIDS on children’s development in South Africa (in collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council), and on school- and community-based interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee).

Contact Information:

Phone: 212-998-5410
Email: la39@nyu.edu

Position: Assistant Professor of Child Health and Human Rights at Harvard University

Director of the Research Program on Children and Global Adversity (RPCGA)

Background: Theresa S. Betancourt is Director of the Research Program on Children and Global Adversity (RPCGA) and Assistant Professor of Child Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Her central research interests include:

• the developmental and psychosocial consequences of concentrated adversity on children and families;
• resilience and protective processes in child development;
• child health and human rights; and
• applied cross-cultural mental health research.

Dr. Betancourt is the Principal Investigator of an ongoing longitudinal study of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and is currently collaborating with Partners in Health Rwanda to launch a mixed-methods study of mental health needs among HIV/AIDS-affected youth. Recently she served as the Co-PI of a randomized-controlled trial of interventions for the treatment of depression symptoms in youth displaced by war in northern Uganda.

Her prior research includes a study of the psychosocial dimensions of an emergency education program serving internally-displaced Chechen youth, an investigation of the relationship between connectedness, social support and emotional problems in Chechen IDP youth and a study of the relationship between caregiver and child mental health among Eritrean Kunama refugees living on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. She is also collaborating with local child protection NGOs in Sierra Leone to develop a policy initiative designed to improve child welfare and social services for war-affected youth in that country.

Dr. Betancourt graduated summa cum laude in psychology from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon and holds a Master in Art Therapy from the University of Louisville. She completed her doctoral work in Maternal and Child Health with concentrations in Psychiatric Epidemiology and Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Contact Information:

Theresa_Betancourt@harvard.edu

Affiliations:

Dr. Braitstein is an Associate Research Professor at Indiana University School of Medicine (United States), a Visiting Lecturer at Moi University School of Medicine (Kenya), an Affiliated Investigator with the Regenstrief Institute of Informatics (United States), and Associate Professor (Status Only) in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.  In addition to doing her own research, she is Co-Field Director of Research for the AMPATH Consortium in Eldoret, Chief Medical Information Officer and Director of Monitoring and Evaluation for the USAID-AMPATH Partnership.

Background:

Dr. Paula Braitstein is an epidemiologist living and working in Eldoret, Kenya with Moi University School of Medicine, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, and the USAID-Academic Model Providing Access To Healthcare (AMPATH) Partnership.  Originally from Montreal, Canada, Paula spent 13 years working in the community-based HIV/AIDS movement in Canada as an HIV treatment educator and activist.  After receiving her MA in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University, Paula completed both an MSc and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of British Columbia and went on to do her post-doctoral research in Bern, Switzerland working with the Antiretroviral Treatment in Lower Income Countries (ART-LINC) Collaboration conducting multi-centre observational analyses of the effectiveness of antiretroviral treatment in low and middle income countries.  Paula has published widely in the peer-reviewed literature on diverse topics.  Her research foci today are concentrated on vulnerable and marginalized children in sub-Saharan Africa, including orphans, street-involved children and youth, HIV-infected and affected children, and the mental and reproductive health issues of adolescents.

Contact Information:
Moi University, Faculty of Health Sciences
P.O. Box 4806
Eldoret, Kenya 30100

(317) 630-6770
pbraitst@iupui.edu

Position: Clinical Associate Professor

Center for Global Health & Development at Boston University

Background: Malcolm Bryant is a public health physician with over 30 years of experience as a clinician, educator, researcher, and manager of public health programs. He has devoted his career to the improvement of health outcomes by increasing access to high-quality health services.   Dr. Bryant has designed and implemented reproductive and child health programs, with continuing emphasis on the determinants of health and the development of community-based health systems. He has long-term experience in Africa (Zimbabwe and Cameroon), and has conducted short-term consultancies in more than 15 African countries and extensive work in Haiti, Latin America, and Asia. In addition to the design and implementation of health programs, Dr. Bryant has evaluated numerous USAID field projects in Haiti, Nicaragua, Madagascar, Senegal, and the Philippines.   Dr. Bryant works equally effectively with civil society organizations and public-sector agencies.  In 2007 – 2008 he assisted the Rwandan Ministry of Health in the design of Rwanda’s new national policy and five-year strategy for quality improvement.   Recently Dr. Bryant worked with the Ministry of Health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to introduce an innovative methodology to maintain and improve the quality at the point of service delivery by bringing together health system and community approaches to care. Currently Dr. Bryant is a Research Associate at the Center for Global Health and Development at Boston University’s School of Public Health, where he manages a research program seeking to improve quality and coverage of services to orphans and vulnerable children around the world through applied, operations, and evaluation research.

Contact Information: bryantm@bu.edu

(617) 414-1266

OVC Wellbeing Content:

Blog:

New article in Health Affairs evaluates PEPFAR OVC projects

Manuscripts:

PEPFAR’s support for orphans and vulnerable children: some beneficial effects, but too little data, and progress spread too thin

Cho, Hyunsan

Position: Associate Research Scientist,

Background: Hyunsan Cho, Ph.D. has conducted research on a variety of prevention and evaluation studies over the past 10 years. As a sociologist with a strong statistical background, she has extensive experience in conducting NIH-funded randomized controlled trials. Currently, she serves as a Co-Investigator of randomized trials in Kenya and Zimbabwe (PI, Denise Hallfors). These projects are innovative clinical trials to test whether keeping orphans in school can reduce their risk for HIV infection. She led the randomization and data analyses for both projects and participated in all aspects of the research process for the Kenya project, including human subjects, data and safety monitoring, coordinating the work of study partners, and budget development and monitoring. She is well published and has recently submitted an application to lead a large R01 clinical trial in Kenya that builds on the current Kenya and Zimbabwe orphan studies. The application achieved a score at the 11th percentile. Given the NIMH priority for funding new investigator, it is expected that this grant will be funded in April 2011.

Prior to her work in Africa, Dr. Cho was Co-Investigator and chief methodologist of a large randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the Reconnecting Youth (RY) program for high-risk high school youth in two large urban U.S. cities. She led a key project paper on iatrogenic program effects, and another on the association between drug use and suicide behaviors. Her range of statistical methods is very broad and includes longitudinal data analysis, structural equation modeling, meta-analysis, cluster analysis, social network analysis, and multi-level analysis. Dr. Cho has also provided innovative methodological leadership in integrating qualitative process evaluation with quantitative outcome data in a study evaluating “Fighting Back” community coalitions and the RY program. She also led a paper on the evaluation of federal school policy which examines the gap between state/district level and federal government policy on authorized drug and violence prevention activities in the U.S. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Cho is a productive and very promising investigator with strong NIH study experience that encompasses HIV prevention, adolescent health, and randomized controlled trials.

Contact Information:

cho@pire.org

919-256-2620

OVC Wellbeing Content:

School support as structural HIV prevention for adolescent orphans in Western Kenya

Position: Clinical Psychologist specialising in the development of children and adolescents and is also a lecturer at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oran, Algeria

Background: Mrs. Fatima Delladj-Sebaa is a practising Clinical Psychologist specialising in the development of children and adolescents and is also a lecturer at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oran, Algeria. She was educated at the Universities of Lille, France and Oran, Algeria and holds a doctorate on the identity of adolescence. Ms Fatima Delladj-Sebaa has extensive research experience regarding child and adolescent psychology with a particular emphasis on the issues of suicide, family, drug use, violence against women, child and youth participation and education. She is a research associate at the National Centre for Research into Social and Cultural Anthropology and has worked as an Expert and Consultant for various organisations including UNIFEM, UNICEF, the Social and Economic Council and the National Organisation for the Fight against Drugs and Drug-addiction. She is Vice President of the National Council for the Family and Women and regularly broadcasts on local radio on issues of education and community cohesion. She has published widely on the issue of adolescence and identity.

Contact:

http://www.acerwc.org/experts/

Position: Visiting Lecturer at Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo

Director (Strategy) at the Good Practice Group

Background: Ananda Galappatti is a medical anthropologist and a practitioner in the field of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in situations of conflict, disaster and poverty. His work in this field over the past 15 years has been concerned with strategic interventions to improve access to knowledge and skills, build collaborative networks and enhance coherence within the field in Sri Lanka and also globally. His interests span the provision of MHPSS emergency responses, integration of MHPSS into post-emergency reconstruction and development, care and protection of vulnerable children, responses to gender-based violence, and services for people with serious mental illness.

Ananda was a co-founder of the journal Intervention and continues to serve on its editorial board. He is a founding Steward of the global MHPSS Network. Ananda is an affiliated fellow of the Social Policy Analysis & Research Centre (SPARC) at the University of Colombo, and also a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Graduate Studies there. He is currently a co-chair of the MHPSS Working Group at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

In 2010, Ananda co-founded The Good Practice Group, a social business for the development of MHPSS services, and he serves as its honarary director for strategy. Ananda currently lives in Batticaloa, on the East coast of Sri Lanka.

Contact Information:

ananda@goodpracticegroup.org

Position: International Sector Program Coordinator at the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research (CHPIR) at Duke University

Education: MPH, Health Behavior and Health Education; 2009. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BA, Psychology; 2004. Williams College, Williamstown, MA.

Background: Amy coordinates two international studies at CHPIR: the Positive Outcomes for Orphans (POFO) study and Coping with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania (CHAT). Her responsibilities include tracking research activities and communicating with project field staff, conducting site visits, developing study instruments, drafting study reports, assisting with data analysis, coordinating weekly meetings, submitting study amendments to the IRB, and other project related tasks as required.

Contact Information: amy.hobbie@duke.edu

919-613-5430