Position: Fellow at the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University Executive Director, Uganda Youth Development Links
Background: Rogers Kasirye, from Kampala, Uganda, received his BA in Social Work and Social Administration in 1991 and an MA in Human Rights in 2001 from Makerere University, Kampala. He has consulted with both local non-governmental organizations and international agencies, including WHO, UNODC ILO/IPECICF-Macro, and UNICEF, where he has been involved in the planning, implementation, advocacy and evaluation of programs related to child labor, street and slum children in Uganda and East Africa.
Mr. Kasirye’s past research has focused on juvenile drug abuse and sexual risk behaviors and AIDS awareness among street girls in Kampala. He has participated in NIDA-supported collaborative research designed to adapt materials on substance abuse and run away youth to Uganda. He is currently Executive Director of the Uganda Youth Development Link, and serves as scientific advisor to the Mentor Foundation and as Chairperson of the East Africa Policy Alliance, an NGO consortium. During his Fellowship year at VCU, Mr. Kasirye wants to learn more about substance prevention and policy work in the US and explore ways of improving the policy environment in Uganda.
Mr. Kasiryer also writes a blog for the World Federation Against Drugs.
Contact Information: kasiryer@yahoo.com
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital
Background:Caroline C. Kuo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Child and Adolescent Biobehavioral HIV at Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital. Her central research interests include the psychosocial and behavioral outcomes among HIV affected children and their caregivers and the development of preventive interventions to address health-related sequalae among HIV affected families. Dr. Kuo was recently the Co-Principal Investigator of the KwaZulu Natal Site of the South African Young Carers Study. This study set out to understand the effects of familial HIV on children and caregivers in HIV-endemic South African communities.
Dr. Kuo graduated with high distinction from University of Virginia. She also has a Master in International Development and a Doctorate in Social Policy, both from the University of Oxford.
Contact Information:
Caroline_Kuo@brown.edu
OVC Wellbeing Content:
Health of adults caring for orphaned children in an HIV-endemic community in Southern Africa
Depression among carers of AIDS-orphaned and other-orphaned children in Umlazi Township, South Africa
Position: Co-Director of the Center for Child Protection at the University of Indonesia
Background: Santi Kusumaningrum is a development and child protection specialist with more than a decade of experience on Indonesian legislation, policy, welfare and the justice system. Prior to pioneering the establishment and co-directing the Center on Child Protection at UI, Santi had worked for over 6 years managing UNICEF’s Policy, Legal and Justice for Children program in Indonesia at the national level, and overseeing those in more than 10 provinces and districts. Santi provides ongoing technical advise for a number of nat ional initiatives to the Ministry of Planning; the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights; and the Ministry of Social Affairs. She championed a significant change in Supreme Court’s legal aid system to better reach the most disadvantaged, after supported the creation of the pro bono legal aid unit and services in the Indonesian Bar Association. University of Indonesia where Center on Child Protection is operating is a familiar place to Santi as she spent the first 5 years of her professional life as Assistant Lecturer and Researcher in the Criminology Department.
Position: Associate Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University
Background: Emphasizing the centrality of social relationships and cultural-historical context, Dr. Le Mare’s research focuses on risk and resilience processes and school adjustment in mainstream and diverse (e.g., Aboriginal, immigrant, early deprived, and other) populations.
Dr. Le Mare’s research currently is funded by a grant from the Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, an SFU SSHRC Small Grant, and Health Canada.
Contact Information:
lemare@sfu.ca
Position: Mellon-Research Fellow based at the Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape
Background: Mr. Benyam Dawit Mezmur is currently a Mellon-Research Fellow based at the Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the lecturer of the LLM module on Children’s Rights and the Law at UWC. Previously, he has worked as a Legal Officer for the African Child Policy Forum and as a part-time lecturer in two private academic institutions in Addis Ababa. Mr. Benyam Dawit Mezmur has been invited as a guest lecturer in academic institutions in Africa and Europe, has been awarded research fellowships by the Universities of Utrecht and Groningen (Netherlands) and Abo Akademi (Finland), and presented in national and international conferences. He has also undertaken work for some intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. He received his LLB from the Addis Ababa University, a LLM from the University of Pretoria (the Centre for Human Rights), and a Doctorate in Law from the University of the Western Cape. He has been closely involved in the work of the African Committee since 2002.
Contact Information:
http://www.acerwc.org/experts/
Position: Head and Associate Professor of the Center of Child Psychiatry and Social Pediatrics in Vilnius University
Background: Dainius Puras M.D. is the Head and Associate Professor of the Center of Child Psychiatry and Social Pediatrics in Vilnius University. He is also teaching public mental health and health policy in the Medical Faculty and in the Institute of International Relations and Policy Studies of Vilnius university. Dr. Puras was one of the founders of the Lithuanian Psychiatric Association and was the first President of this Association in 1990-1992. He initiated the Lithuanian Welfare Society for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities and the Child Development Center in Vilnius. Dr. Puras was a Dean of Medical Faculty of Vilnius University in 2000-2002. He has served as an expert and a consultant for governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations in 12 countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the fields of mental health policy and services, child and adolescent mental health, deinstitutionalization and development of community based services for children, youth and families at risk. Dr. Puras is the Chairman of the Board of Human Rights Monitoring Institute in Lithuania. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Global Initiative on Psychiatry. In 2007, Dr. Puras was elected and serves as a member and expert of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Main areas of interest: human rights and mental health; balancing within the bioposychosocial paradigm; development of modern mental health policies with focus on deinstitutionalization and integration of mental health services in general health and social policies; prevention of violence and suicidal behavior as public health problems; child and adolescent mental health; promotion of resilience and other protective factors in children, families and communities.
Position: Visiting Fellow, School of Geography, Politics & Sociology – New Castle University
Background: Dr. Selmen first came to Newcastle University in 1968 and was Head of Department of Social Policy 1994-1999. He took early retirement in 2002 and have held a Visiting Fellowship since then. His early research concentrated on human fertility behaviour and more recently he has focused his interests on the issue of teenage pregnancy, carrying out two studies of the education of young mothers for DfES. Today his main area of research is international adoption on which he has published widely. He is currently Chair of the Network for Intercountry Adoption and a Trustee of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering.
Research Interests: intercountry adoption; the demography of adoption; teenage pregnancy and motherhood;
Otherexpertise: comparative social policy; demographic change and public policy;
Current work: trends in international adoption 1998-2006
Future research: comparison of adoption policy in Spain and the UK; intercountry adoption from Ethiopia
Contact Information:
Email: peter.selman@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 284 3488
Position: Concordia University Research Chair in Psychology (Tier 1) and Director of the Centre de Recherche en Développement Humain (CRDH)
Background:
Dr. Lisa Serbin’s present research involves a continuation of her longitudinal projects on child development and developmental psychopathology, women’s health, and the social and environmental factors in the transfer of health and developmental risk from parent to child.
Dr. Serbin is a native of New York City. She was educated entirely in the United States, receiving her B.A. in Psychology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and her Ph.D. in Psychology (Clinical) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She moved to Montreal in 1978 to join Concordia’s Psychology department. Dr. Serbin is currently the Director of the renowned Centre de recherche en développement humain (CRDH), a research ‘centre of excellence’ funded under Quebec’s Regroupements stratégiques program, which is headquartered at Concordia’s Loyola campus.
After twenty-five years as a faculty member at Concordia, Dr. Serbin has established herself as one of the University’s stars in research. Some of her more important achievements include:
• Overseeing the expansion of CRDH in 2004, which involved the incorporation of thirty-five new researchers from five institutions and nine disciplines and was the result of further funding success with the Regroupements stratégiques program.
• Carrying out a series of widely cited studies on children’s concepts of gender and gender roles, and their relation to gender-role behaviour from early childhood to adolescence.
• Conducting The Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, through which Dr. Serbin and her co-investigators have established the negative long-term consequences of aggressive behaviour in girls, and identified specific processes involved in the transfer of health risk between generations within disadvantaged populations.
• Being named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in both the Developmental Psychology and Psychology of Women divisions, as well as a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association.
• Receiving the Concordia University Research Award in 1998, for which she held the title of Senior Concordia University Research Fellow for one year.
Contact Information:
lisa.serbin@concordia.ca
Position: Director, Center for Global Health & Development at Boston University,
Professor and Chair of the Department of International Health
Background: Jonathon Lee Simon, MPH, DSc, Director of the Center for Global Health & Development, leads scientific and strategic efforts of the CGHD. Dr. Simon is also Chair of the Department of International Health and Professor of International Health at Boston University School of Public Health. He received his Bachelor of Science in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California at Berkeley; his MPH is also from UC Berkeley. Dr. Simon received his Doctorate of Science from the Harvard University School of Public Health, having completed dissertation research on the changing demography of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Dr. Simon has had extensive experience working in Africa and South Asia, particularly on issues including child survival, infectious diseases, and capacity strengthening. For the past seven years, he has been part of a core research team at the CGHD evaluating the social and economic impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic while maintaining an active role in the center’s ongoing child survival research work. He serves as Principal Investigator (PI) of an applied research project on orphans and vulnerable children. He remains involved in the technical work on HIV economics and program evaluation studies. Dr. Simon teaches a master’s-level course on the history of the public health movement and advises doctoral students.
Dr. Simon has been involved in applied child health research activities for 25 years, working in more than 20 developing countries. Before joining Boston University in 2001, Dr. Simon was a tenured Fellow of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), and Director of the HIID Health Office. During his tenure at HIID, he was resident in Pakistan for two years as the regional advisor. He worked extensively on strengthening institutional and individual research capacity.
Contact Information: 617-414-1260 jonsimon@bu.edu
