Fofana, Abraham A is an Assistant Professor in Political Science Department, University of Liberia, and has lectured for more than 15 years in various National and International Universities.

Fofana obtained a Certificate in Humanitarian Response and Post – Conflict reconstruction at Watson Institute, Brown University, USA. He also has an Advanced Diploma in Peace, Security and Human rights in Sweden and Cambodia. Fofana is a PhD candidate at the University of Science Malaysia in Political Science. He obtained a Master degree of Human Science in Political Science and Post Graduate Diploma in Public Administration and B.A degree in Linguistics.

He is the head of PLG- Liberia and has served as a guest researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute Uppsala, Sweden, his research interests are Security, Ethnicity, International Organizations and Psychosocial counseling.

Fofana has served as a consultant for many organizations in Liberia including UNDP, ChildFund, Plan International, MML and German Agro Action. He has published many articles including, Transformation of OAU into AU: prospects and challenges and Muslim Women in the Global Society. Other writings include; Disarming and Building peace in Liberia: challenges and prospects. Psychosocial Programs Evaluation: Developing a Better Understanding of Effective Interventions to achieve the “Soft” Life-Stage Outcomes for Children and baseline “Assessment on Sexual Gender based violence in River Gee and Sinoe counties”

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Agatha Kafuko’s research seeks to identify and examine the nature and prevalence of mental health problems among older children and adolescents in post conflict and resource constrained communities, with perinatal HIV exposure, including those who are HIV-infected and those who were perinatally exposed to HIV but remain uninfected. Using mixed methods, the study seeks to compare the impact of HIV infection on the two categories of HIV affected children and adolescents and to delineate social and environmental risk factors associated with mental health functioning among these children. The research is intended to generate evidence that can contribute to informing the development of appropriate intervention strategies for improving mental health functioning among the HIV affected children in low resource and post conflict settings of Uganda.

Ajwang’ Warria, DLitt et Phil., is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary (Canada). Prior to this, she was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). Her research interests lie in child protection, transnational migration, intervention research and international social work. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications.

Ajwang’ has led and supported various projects initiated by the South African government, USAID and UNICEF focusing on children on the move, trafficking in persons and alternative care for children. She has worked on various research, practice, and advocacy-related initiatives in southern and East Africa. In Canada, she is working with several community partners on violence prevention and migration data curation as part of a Newcomer Knowledge Hub. Her current projects in South Africa are addressing survivor-informed service provision to trafficked persons, Africentric trauma-informed practice, child migration, and community-based child protection.

Ajwang’ serves as a member of the Olympic Refuge Foundation Think Tank. She is a research fellow at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa). She holds a doctoral degree from University of Johannesburg and a Master degree in Clinical Social Work from the University of Cape Town.

Dr. Amy Ritterbusch is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, she was an Associate Professor in the School of Government at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Amy has led social justice-oriented participatory action research (PAR) initiatives with street-connected communities in Colombia for the last decade and recently in Uganda. Her work involves the documentation of human rights violations and forms of violence exerted against homeless individuals, sex workers, drug users and street-connected children and youth, and subsequent community-driven mobilizations to catalyze social justice outcomes within these communities. Throughout her research and teaching career she has explored different approaches to engaging students and community members through critical and responsible interaction between classroom and street spaces in Colombia and Uganda through the lens of social justice-oriented PAR. Her research has been funded by the Open Society Foundations, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright U.S. Program and other networks promoting global social justice and her work has been published in Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Global Public Health,Child Indicators Research, Child Abuse & Neglect and other peer-reviewed journals.

Andrés Ham is an associate professor at the Alberto Lleras Camargo School of Government at the Universidad de los Andes. He has a PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois in the United States, with a Master's degree in Economics from the National University of La Plata, Argentina and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the National Autonomous University of Honduras. He investigates labor markets, education, poverty and inequality, crime and violence, and the effects of public policies on the well-being of people in Latin America.

Andrés Moya, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the School of Economics, Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He has a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis and Masters and Bachelors degrees in Economics from Universidad de Los Andes. He is a member of EGAP and a member of the scientific committee of the Colombian Longitudinal Survey of Universidad de Los Andes (ELCA). His research falls in the fields of Development and Behavioral Economics focusing on the economic, psychological, and behavioral consequences of violence and forced displacement in Colombia. In his research, Andrés has analyzed the effects of violence and psychological trauma on: (1) different dimensions of behavior, such as risk aversion, risk perceptions, and hope; (2) cognitive and socioemotional skills; (3) early childhood development; and (4) performance in job-training programs and in the labor market. A second area of his research agenda focuses on the relationship between poverty, inequality, and human capital accumulation. Currently, Andrés is leading the implementation and impact evaluation of Semillas de Apego, a group-based psychosocial intervention for primary caregivers, which aims to foster early childhood development among children exposed to violence in Colombia.

Guarín holds a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master's in Social Work from the same university, Sociologist and Social Communicator from the Universidad Javeriana-Bogotá. Her research interests include the study of changes in families, child and family social policies, vulnerable populations, poverty, inequality, and gender studies. She has recently advanced studies on the food quota system in Colombia and other countries from a comparative perspective; changes in family structures and their consequences, as well as their implications for family social policies; gender violence and social protection and migration.

Anne Ruhweza Katahoire PhD, is a social and medical anthropologist with over 20 years of experience researching children and adolescent health. She has served as a consultant for local and international organizations including: AfriChild, Children AIDS Fund, Child Fund International, Plan International, WHO, UNICEF, PATH and Population Council. She has been a member of the College of Curators of Every Woman Every Child Innovation Marketplace and currently chairs the East African Children’s Rights and Violence Prevention Fund. She has a special interest in school and community-based interventions that address children’s health and development needs in their broadest sense including physical, emotional and social well being as well as those that promote healthy sexual and reproductive development of adolescents. She specializes in qualitative child-focused research methodologies. She is a faculty on the Joint Advanced Seminars run by the Consortium for Advanced Research training in Africa involving eight African universities and is engaged in the teaching and supervision of masters and PhD students.

Arturo Harker Roa, PhD, is an Associate Professor of of the School of Government at the Universidad de los Andes. He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His expertise lies in applied microeconomics and quantitative public policy evaluation. In the last three years his research agenda has focused on studying the impact of adverse childhood experiences, such as exposure to crime, violence, and forced displacement, and trauma on the development of cognitive, social, and emotional abilities. Dr. Harker focuses on the design and evaluation of interventions that help mitigate this impact. His recent research projects focused on the impact of urban violence on academic performance and psychotherapy to protect early childhood in the context of civil violence in Colombia.

Bernadette J. Madrid, MD is the Director of the Child Protection Unit (CPU) of the University of the Philippines Manila – Philippine General Hospital where she is concurrently Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics. She is the Executive Director of the Child Protection Network Foundation, Inc., an NGO that supports the training of Child Protection Professionals and the development of Women and Child Protection Units in the Philippines. She is a member of several government committees on health, social welfare, law enforcement and the judiciary & is consistently invited to be a resource person for congressional & senate hearings on laws affecting women and children. Dr. Madrid has published several papers on child abuse & neglect which have led to changes in policy and practice in the Philippines. She has been a consultant and trainer for different international agencies such as UNICEF, WHO, UNESCAP & UNFPA. She is a reviewer for Child Abuse & Neglect, the International Journal, Journal of Interpersonal Violence and Trauma, Violence and Abuse. She has engineered changes in the medical, legal and social welfare paradigm on women and child protection in the Philippines that has led to her being the recipient of several national awards.

Dr. Bree Akesson is the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Global Adversity and Wellbeing, Associate Director of the Centre for Research on Security Practices, and Associate Professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has worked for over two decades with children and families impacted by war and displacement in settings such as Chechnya, Northern Uganda, Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Her program of research ranges from micro-level understandings of the experiences of war-affected families to macro-level initiatives to strengthen global social service workforce systems. Ongoing research projects include the perinatal experiences of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, the impact of climate change on families displaced by war, and integrated service access for refugee families. Dr. Akesson’s work has been cited over 1,000 times across a range of disciplines such as geography, health sciences, human rights, and psychology. Her latest book From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home—co-authored with Dr. Andrew Basso and published in 2022 by Rutgers University Press—was the inspiration for a United Nations report calling for the classification of home demolition as a war crime.

She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine in the Public Health and Epidemiology area and the Director of Internationalization at the Vice presidency of Research and Creation. Her research focuses on studying social inequalities in sexual health, reproductive health, and vector-borne diseases. She is passionate about interdisciplinary work, developing social indicators, and advising health projects with an intercultural focus. She graduated from Anthropology, Psychology, and a master's degree in Anthropology from Universidad de Los Andes. She also holds a master's degree in Social Epidemiology and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Public Health from University College London.

Chen Reis, JD, MPH, is an expert on sexual violence in settings affected by crises and on ethical and safety issues related to collection and use of data on sexual violence. She is a Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Humanitarian Assistance Program at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She was previously a technical officer at the World Health Organization with appointments in the departments of Gender and Women’s Health and Health Action in Crises. Over seven years at the WHO her responsibilities included managing the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) as well as technical and policy work on gender, sexual violence prevention and response and sexual and reproductive health in humanitarian settings and on humanitarian policy issues including civil military coordination and humanitarian space. Ms. Reis continues to consult for WHO on projects relating to sexual violence including medico-legal aspects. Her current research is on accountability in the international humanitarian system and on sexual violence in conflict settings. She has also served as a Senior Research Associate with Physicians for Human Rights (USA) where her work included studies on sexual violence, children’s rights, women’s rights, HIV & AIDS, and conflict & health.

Christina Clark-Kazak, Phil is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration. She has previously served as Editor-in-chief of Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, and President of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Prior to joining the University of Ottawa, she worked for York University (2009-2017), Saint Paul University (2007-2008) and the Canadian government (1999-2007). Her research focuses on age discrimination in migration and development policy, young people’s political participation, and interdisciplinary methodologies in forced migration contexts.

M. Claire Greene, PhD MPH, is an epidemiologist and implementation scientist interested in identifying opportunities to improve population mental health through community- and systems-level interventions. Specifically, her research examines models of integrating mental health and psychosocial support across sectors to enhance the accessibility, relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability of these programs for displaced populations in humanitarian contexts. In her work she consults and collaborates with governments, non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, and academic institutions. At Mailman, Dr. Greene teaches Investigative Methods in Complex Emergencies, a course focused on how to collect and effectively use data to inform programming and policy in humanitarian emergencies. She is faculty within the Program on Forced Migration and Health, a member of the Columbia University Global Mental Health Programs steering committee, and a faculty affiliate of the Columbia Population Research Center.

Maldonado's main areas of research are Public Economics and Social Policies with an emphasis on problems and policies that affect young people. He has carried out theoretical and empirical work and in both cases where he dealt with the design of social policy (education, pensions, taxes and conditional transfers) and the effects of current policies in Colombia (educational policies, conditional transfers, social protection). His research looks closely at the way social policy is structured. He has been involved in several exercises examining the state and results of Colombian public policy in these same areas (through various studies for the Colombian Government, Fundación Compartir and the British Council), which have led to discussions at the national level about the need for policy change and what form the new policy should take. His research has been published in international indexed journals such as the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Health Economics and the Journal of Public Economics among others. He participates as a professor of courses where students develop skills for the design and analysis of public policy. In particular, he is a professor of the Ethics, Justice and Public Policy course where the main theories on justice in public policy are studied with an emphasis on the scope of these theories to think about problems in developing countries. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Educational Development. Between 2014 and 2021 he was director of research at the School of Government of the Universidad de los Andes.

Dicky Pelupessy, PhD, is a lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia with areas of specialisation: social psychology, community psychology, and peace psychology. He received his PhD degree in Community Psychology from Victoria University, Melbourne (Australia). Currently, he is the director of Crisis Center at the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia. Once, he worked closely with Center for Child Protection and Wellbeing (or PUSKAPA) at Universitas Indonesia as Technical Lead for Child Protection in Emergencies. He was one of writers who developed UNICEF-supported Child Protection in Emergencies (CPiE) Toolkit in Indonesia. He has extensive and hands-on experience in emergencies in Indonesia and has been one of key resource persons in mental health and psychosocial support in emergencies in Indonesia. He has been appointed as national co-coordinator of psychosocial support sub-cluster. In addition, Dr. Pelupessy is the coordinator of Master of Applied Psychology program with concentration in Social Intervention at the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia. He continuously aspires to be a reflective practitioner. He has a great passion as a social interventionist/action researcher working within an ecological framework.

Since his training and interest in health education, Diego Ivan Lucumí has worked on public health interventions for more than 15 years, including policies, plans, programs, and projects at the national, territorial, and community levels.  Health behaviors and health education are his area of ​​performance and contribution to public health. His work is focused on the understanding and intervention of social and behavioral factors that influence the health of individuals, groups, communities and society. In particular, his research is oriented towards the design, implementation and evaluation of public health interventions, as well as the analysis of health inequities. His main field of research is related to cardiovascular health and disease, this includes the study and intervention of risk and protective factors, living conditions and structural factors, including public policies.  Another of his areas of interest has to do with the study of the challenges that urbanization and urban contexts have for health and quality of life, especially in intermediate cities, and the development of initiatives to face these challenges. His work is mainly based on the use of mixed and participatory research approaches.

Marion M. Mugisha holds a PhD in Sociology from South Dakota State University, USA. He specialized in Social Organization and Deviance. His PhD was in Urban Sociology (and Social entrepreneurship) focusing on Informal Transport. His dissertation is entitled "Commercial Motorcycle (Boda Boda) Riders and The Production Of Space in Kampala City, Uganda."  Mugisha currently works as a lecturer in the department of Sociology and Social Administration, Kyambogo University, Uganda. He chaired the department for three years. Currently he serves as the Chair of the Academic Staff Association of Kyambogo University. He teaches courses in Sociological Theory, Criminology and Deviance, Urban Sociology and Scholarship in Sociology. He is active in academic and applied research in Urban Sociology (Informal Transport), community development, social entrepreneurship, health policy, and deviance. His teaching involves design and delivery of the above courses. Mugisha has also developed several undergraduate and graduate programs in department, and supervised several undergraduate and graduate students. His applied research projects focus on livelihoods and practices of Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, and best practices in this sector. He is also working on an engaged scholarship project with Murora Community in Kisoro District, Western Uganda, which aims at understanding the success of neighborhood associations in this community and exploring possibilities and opportunities of learning and transferring this knowledge to other communities. The project aims to train at least 20 MA and 10 PhD students. Mugisha has published in peer reviewed journals and with reputable book publishers.  He has also provided consultancy services to several international and local firms and NGOs.

Kenneth holds a PhD and MSC in Marketing from Gulu University. His research interests are in business management, marketing, procurement and statistics. Dr. Olido started his career with Gulu University in 2002 as a Teaching Assistant. Currently he is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Procurement Management at the same university.

Dr. Olido has collaborated with AfriChild Centre as a Trainer in quantitative data analysis in a program for training inter-university senior researchers from 7 universities in Uganda.

Work with VACS data
Dr. Olido's research project focuses on assessing the association between adverse childhood experience and risks of HIV infection among adolescents aged 13 to 24.

Ejuu Godfrey is an Education Psychologist with specialized training in Early Childhood Education (ECE). He is a professor at Kyambogo University specializing in Early Childhood Education and research in cultural indigenous knowledge for development. He has participated in ECE policies and ECE community mobilization and advocacy. He does consultancy work for different agencies that work with and for children.

Elizabeth J. Letourneau, Ph.D. is a Professor, Department of Mental Health, and Director, Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). She has focused her career on developing and evaluating child sexual abuse prevention policy and practice. As inaugural director of the Moore Center, Dr. Letourneau’s efforts include developing and evaluating child sexual abuse prevention interventions that target adolescents, parents, and youth serving organizations. She is also leading an evaluation of federal policy impacts on violence prevention, and a large-scale project to develop more effective methods for communicating about child sexual abuse as a preventable public health problem. Her work has been widely reported in high impact media, including This American Life, TEDMED, PBS News Hour, NPR’s On Point, Psychology Today, and The New Yorker.  Dr. Letourneau’s research findings establishing the inefficacy and harmfulness of juvenile sex offense registration policies was influential in three U.S. state supreme court cases and cited by several state legislatures in support of revising these policies. This policy work was recognized by JHSPH, which awarded Dr. Letourneau its inaugural Faculty Practice Award in 2017. Dr. Letourneau is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Forum on Global Violence Prevention, the National Coalition to Prevention Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation, the ITU UNESCO Broadband Commission Working Group on Child Safety Online. She previously served on the World Health Organization Guidelines Develop Group to Establish Clinical Guidelines for Responding to Sexual Abuse or Sexual Assault of Children and Adolescents.

Since his training and interest in health education, Chaux has worked on public health interventions for more than 15 years, including policies, plans, programs, and projects at the national, territorial, and community levels.  Health behaviors and health education are his area of ​​performance and contribution to public health. His work is focused on the understanding and intervention of social and behavioral factors that influence the health of individuals, groups, communities and society. In particular, her research is oriented towards the design, implementation and evaluation of public health interventions, as well as the analysis of health inequities. Her main field of research is related to cardiovascular health and disease, this includes the study and intervention of risk and protective factors, living conditions and structural factors, including public policies.  Another of his areas of interest has to do with the study of the challenges that urbanization and urban contexts have for health and quality of life, especially in intermediate cities, and the development of initiatives to face these challenges. His work is mainly based on the use of mixed and participatory research approaches.

Dr. Firiminus Mugwanya is a Professional Social Worker with a strong teaching and Research focus in Social Development, community development, social change with an Engaged scholarship approach. He holds a PhD with a specialty in Community Development Systems Governance from The School of Law and Government – Dublin City University, Ireland, a Master of Arts Degree in Development Studies with a speciality in Local and Regional Development from The Erasmus International Institute of Social Studies – The Netherlands, and a Bachelors’ degree in Social Work and Social Administration from Makerere University Kampala, Uganda. Currently, he teaches at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration (SWSA), School of Social Sciences, Makerere University Kampala.

Previously he has served as a Graduate Programmes Coordinator (2013-2017), and an undergraduate Programmes Coordinator (2004-2009) at the Department of SWSA. He has undertaken a number of research projects, some of which have been funded through competitive academic research grants resulting into publications in journals and books. He has also provided research and consultancy services to local and international service agencies and a number of Government of Uganda Ministries and Departments

Firman Witoelar Kartaadipoetra, PhD is a Fellow at Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. Previously, he was the Research Director of SurveyMeter, a research organization based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Witoelar’s research interest is in the area of development microeconomics, focusing on studying health behavior and outcomes, long term consequences of human capital formation, survey design and methodology, and project evaluations. In the past 10 years, Witoelar has been intimately involved with the development and implementation of the last two rounds of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS4 and IFLS5) as one of the Co-Principal Investigators. The IFLS is a longitudinal multi-purpose publicly-available household survey, funded by the United States National Institute of Aging (NIA) and National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD). Covering a period of 21 years, IFLS is one of the highest quality panel data sets in the developing world, and one of the longest. His international fieldwork experience include providing technical advice in setting up longitudinal household surveys supported by the World Bank in Tanzania and Uganda. Recently, Witoelar led SurveyMeter in a partnership with the University of Indonesia’s Center on Child Protection and Well-being (PUSKAPA) and the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture to establish the groundwork for a longitudinal study on the experiences of Indonesian children and their families in order to understand the long-term effects of early childhood adversity.

Fred Ssewamala leads innovative, interdisciplinary research that informs, develops and tests economic empowerment and social protection interventions aimed at improving life chances and long-term developmental impacts for children and adolescent youth impacted by poverty and health disparities in low resource communities. He holds a joint appointment in the Washington University School of Medicine, and directs the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD) and SMART Africa Center.

Currently, Ssewamala is conducting eight large-scale, NIH-funded longitudinal randomized control trials across sub-Saharan Africa: Bridges-R2, Kyaterekera Project, M-Suubi, Obuvumu (Discrete Choice Experiment), Suubi+Adherence-R2, Suubi+Adherence4Youth (MOST), SuubiMHealth and Suubi4Stronger Families. In addition, he is a co-principal investigator on several NIH funded training programs including the D43 ACHIEVE R25 RRT, T37 LEAD, and D43 CHILD-GRF that focus on training early-career researchers committed to careers in child behavioral health.

Ssewamala has over 190 peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Lancet, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Adolescent Health, PLOS One, Prevention Science, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Adolescent Health and co-edits the Global Social Welfare journal. He is a member of the Society for Social Work and Research, American Public Health Association, and the Siteman Cancer Center, as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

Dr. Fred Wabwire-Mangen was trained in Medicine at Makerere University, in Tropical Medicine at Liverpool University and in Immunology and Infectious Diseases and Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University where he obtained his PhD. Dr. Wabwire-Mangen has over 30 years of conducting research on endemic, emerging and reemerging diseases of public health importance in Uganda including malaria, STIs, HIV/AIDS, influenza and other emerging viral infections. He also has demonstrated experience as a senior research scientist in leading and managing multi-disciplinary research teams .He is currently the Executive Director, Regional Centre for Quality Assurance .  Prof.Mangen also trains African professionals to design and manage programs that treat people with HIV or AIDS as well as education programs to prevent infection. He has initiated public health collaboratives among such institutions as Makerere University, Tulane University, and the Rockefeller Foundation .Besides, Prof. Mangen was a key figure in implementing public health without borders education strategy in Africa.

Gameela Samarasinghe, PhD is a clinical Psychologist by training. She initiated the design of and introduced the Postgraduate Diploma and Master’s in Counselling and Psychosocial Support at the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo. These postgraduate programs try to provoke thinking on alternative visions of what support to individuals and communities might look like while at the same time providing training on conventional counselling skills. She is the Coordinator of both programs. She has been a member of various advisory groups developing strategies for post-conflict trauma in Sri Lanka and internationally. These include her role as Technical Advisor to the Asia Foundation’s Reducing the Effects and Incidents of Trauma (RESIST) Program and to the Victims of Trauma Treatment Program (VTTP), which are programs designed to support and treat torture survivors. She was a member of the international research team on “Trauma, Peace building and Development”, run from the University of Ulster. She has written extensively on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in Sri Lanka. She has been awarded many fellowships and has been the recipient of research grants including the Fulbright-Hays Senior Research Scholar Award (2004 – 2005) at Boston University and the Fulbright Advanced Research Award (2013 – 2014) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Hanna-Tina Fischer holds a Doctorate in Public Health, DrPH in Leadership in Global Health and Humanitarian Systems, from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Her doctoral work focused on social determinants of health, investigating the impact of adversity on children’s well-being and analyzing risk as a function of family level system adaptation to crises. Dr. Fischer has over 15 years' experience working on issues of child welfare and violence prevention in low- and lower-middle income countries. She has led post-disaster needs assessments in Thailand and Bangladesh, implemented psychosocial support programs in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and family tracing and reunification programs for children affected by natural disasters in the Philippines. In Africa, Dr. Fischer has worked on programs to support children associated with armed forces in South Sudan, refugee children in Dadaab, Kenya, and unaccompanied minors in South Africa and Zimbabwe. She also has experience of working with refugee populations in Germany and earthquake affected populations in L’Aquila, Italy.

Dr. Fischer is currently a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Charité Center for Global Health, Charité Universitätsmediz in Berlin, Germany, where she is conducting a health policy analysis of the adoption and implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Prior to the Charité, she worked at the Center for International Health Protection, Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), leading a study that assessed the resilience of health systems in Guinea and Sierra Leone during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Fischer has also worked with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and was an Associate of the Department for Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University. Born in Botswana and raised in India and Pakistan, she has a BA in Anthropology and Communication Studies from Goldsmiths’, University of London and an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Jason Hart is a social anthropologist by training (BA, MA, Ph.D University of London). He joined the University of Bath in September 2009 after seven years as a researcher and lecturer at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. He is also Visiting Lecturer at the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies, University of Geneva

Much of Jason’s work has explored the experience of and institutional response to young people on the margins of society and the global economy. Themes such as protection, child rights, peacebuilding, home, militarisation and asylum have been central to this research. Much of his research has been undertaken in situations of political violence and displacement. Jason has worked in South Asia (Sri Lanka, Nepal, India and Bhutan) and, increasingly, in the UK. However, his principal area of interest is the Middle East, particularly Israel / occupied Palestinian territories and Jordan.

Jason has been employed as a consultant author, researcher, evaluator and trainer by various UN, governmental and non-governmental organisations. These include UNICEF, Save the Children, PLAN, Care International, and the Canadian International Development Agency. He has also served as an advisor to the UN in the formulation of studies, guidelines and policies.

jessica Taft is Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz and the Faculty Director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas. Rooted in critical interdisciplinary approaches to child and youth studies, Dr. Taft’s research focuses on young people’s contributions to social change through activism and social
movements in North and South America. Building on nearly twenty years of research with young activists, she is increasingly focused on these young people’s encounters with adult-run political institutions and the various programs that seek to include them in policy-making. In this vein, she is currently working on a book project that looks at the history of how children’s
political participation has been imagined, produced, and institutionalized within the child rights sphere.

She is the author of Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas (NYU Press, 2011), The Kids Are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (NYU Press, 2019), and numerous journal articles on children’s participation, youth politics, and critical civic engagement. Dr. Taft is part of a variety of local, national, and
international collaborative projects focused on child and youth participation and has worked with funders and non governmental organizations to deepen their analysis of the challenges and possibilities of meaningful engagement with young people.

González holds a PhD in art, design and media from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, with a thesis in data visualization. He holds a master's degree in Animation and Digital Arts from the University of Southern California and a visual artist from the Javeriana University. He has dedicated himself to the creation of animated films, interactive pieces for the Internet and physical computing. He is co-founder of the curatorship and visibility group for Latin American animation Moebius Animación (http://moebiusanimacion.com/). His creations have been exhibited in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Poland, the United States and China. He currently directs the EnFlujo Laboratory of Digital Narratives https://enflujo.com

His work is located at points of convergence: traditional animation and data, cinema and creative programming, physical computing and drawing, the archive and current events, curatorship and critical writing. He is an assistant professor at Ceper and currently directs the EnFlujo Digital Narratives laboratory.

Juliana is relatively new to the CPC Learning Network. As an associate professor at the Mailman School of Public Health, she currently teaches Public Health and Humanitarian Action (PHHA), which delves into a ‘contested humanitarianism.’ Juliana is keen to examine the critical questions, and assumptions underpinning humanitarian response in the short term, and development… in the long run. This is with a view to progressively improve the approaches, programs, and policies we use to effectively reduce inequities. Juliana’s prior work experience was in maternal and child health; she spent 5 years working in health systems strengthening programs in South Sudan, aimed at reducing maternal and child morbidity and mortality. Her primary focus has been on identifying methods to evaluate large scale programs, using routine or observational data. Understanding that children’s health and wellbeing does not accrue merely due to the absence of disease or infirmity, she is keen to apply these approaches within the CPC. Juliana speaks English and Kiswahili and is still trying to figure out the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.

Katungi Juma is an Educationist with specialized training in Art Education and Early Childhood Education. His research and career focus are currently on creativity in the field of Early Childhood Care and Education where he is pursuing a Doctoral study. He gained experience working with children for five years in SOS Children’s Village/Hermann Gmeiner Schools and in the last eight years, he has been lecturing in both the Department of Early Childhood Education and The Department of Art and Design at Kyambogo University. He also has International experience lecturing in the Department of Early Childhood (BLU) at Oslo Metropolitan University. His Teaching disciplines are in Creative Arts, Graphics/Media Design, and Research Methods.  He has been involved in research in the areas of Teacher Education, Early Childhood Care and Education, and eco/Community design projects. He has experience in Early Childhood curriculum designing, Designing Instructional materials/activities for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCD), Monitoring and Evaluation of ECD programmes, ECD community mobilization, Developing of Assessment and Research tools. He does Career/Behavioral guidance and counseling for youth. He has also participated in consultancy work for the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC), LABE – Uganda, Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) and Kyambogo University in matters relating to Teacher Education and Early Childhood Education and Care.

Laura Miller-Graff, PhD is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Peace Studies and a core faculty member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical science from the University of Michigan in 2013. Working within an ecological framework, Miller-Graff’s research seeks to understand how various systems (i.e. individual, family, and community) interact to promote or inhibit healthful development following violence exposure. With a focus on children who have multiple traumatic exposures, she investigates resulting patterns of resilience and psychopathology, including the development of post-traumatic stress symptoms. In addition to conducting basic research on the effects of violence on development, Miller-Graff also seeks to identify effective intervention practices for children and families affected by violence. This line of work considers the status of psychosocial interventions currently available in international conflict settings and seeks to identify evidence-based intervention practices that facilitate resilience in families and communities. Specific aims of this work include identifying culturally appropriate assessment and treatment practices and developing efficacious and cost-effective psychosocial interventions that can be readily disseminated in conflict settings.

Lena Verdeli, Ph.D., MSc, is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the Founder and Director of the Teachers College Global Mental Health Lab. Over the years Dr. Verdeli has received funding from governments (US-NIMH; Canadian government –Grand Challenges Canada; UK- Medical Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council); intergovernmental agencies (WHO, UNHCR); and foundations (NARSAD, Eleanor Cook Foundation, etc.) to test psychotherapy for prevention and treatment of mood disorders. In the past fifteen years Lena Verdeli has played a key role in landmark studies involving adaptation, training, and testing of psychotherapy protocols used by both specialists and non-specialists around the globe (psychologists, psychiatrists, primary care staff, community health workers, etc.). She collaborated internationally with academic groups, ministries of health, local NGOs and international agencies to alleviate the suffering of adults locally defined as depressed in southern Uganda; war-affected adolescents in IDP camps in northern Uganda; traumatized IDP women in Colombia; distressed patients in primary care in Goa, India; depressed community members in Haiti; war-affected Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Dr. Verdeli is a Scientific Advisory Council member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the Scientific Advisory Board of Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. She received the Klerman Young Scientist award; the APA Division 52 Mentoring Award; and chaired the research workgroup of the Family NGO at the UN. She is the first author of the manual on Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy, which has been disseminated globally online by WHO (http://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/interpersonal_therapy/en/).

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Lindsay Stark is a social epidemiologist and internationally recognized expert on the protection and well-being of women and children in situations of extreme adversity, with more than two decades of experience leading applied research with operational agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR, International Rescue Committee and the Women’s Refugee Commission. Stark measures sensitive social phenomena and evaluates related interventions to reduce violence, abuse and exploitation of women and children.

Stark co-directs the Center on Violence and Injury Prevention; holds affiliate appointments with the Institute for Public Health; serves on the editorial boards of PLOS One, BMC Public Health, and Conflict and Health; and has published more than 100 chapters and peer-review articles. Before joining the Brown School, Stark was an associate professor at Columbia University, where she served as director of research for the Program on Forced Migration and Health and director of the CPC Learning Network.

Lucie Cluver is a Professor at Oxford University and at the University of Cape Town. She works closely with a superb team of partners and students. Together, they collaborate with the South African government, UNICEF, World Food Programme, UNAIDS, USAID-PEPFAR and CDC, UNDP, IAS, the World Health Organisation and Global Fund, with End Violence and other international NGOs, to provide evidence that can improve the lives of children and adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Cluver co-leads the COVID-19 emergency child abuse prevention response, which has reached over 210 million people in 198 countries with parenting support during the pandemic www.covid19parenting.com.

Madeleine Wayack Pambè is a Demographer and a Senior Lecturer at University Joseph KI-ZERBO in Ouagadougou where she has been a faculty member since 2003. She completed a Research Master and a Doctoral thesis at Université Paris-Nanterre (France) and a Master of Science (MSc) in demography at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (France). She also holds a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Gender from the Graduate Institute of Geneva. The cross-cutting question of her research interest is how both Gender and Education frame the significant changes that are currently taking place in African societies. She has specific expertise on issues related to women empowerment and child protection and wellbeing. She worked as a researcher on the project “ National study on violence against the children in Burkina Faso” commissioned by UNICEF in 2018. She currently coordinates a project carries out in 3 countries on “The gendered socialization of very young adolescents in schools and sexual and reproductive health” funded by the IDRC and another project funded by the European Union on “ Gender-based violence and women’s socioeconomic empowerment in Ouagadougou”. She also co-coordinates a project funded by IDRC which deals with Responses to sexual violence against adolescents in Burkina Faso and respect for their sexual and reproductive rights.

Makini Chisolm-Straker, MD MPH is the 2023-24 Argiro Fellow in the Study of Modern Slavery at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of History at Yale University. Just prior to this position, she was a White House Fellow appointed to the Office of the Commissioner at the Social Security Administration. There, her portfolio included disability justice, economic mobility, housing (in)security, and racial and gender equity work. She has served in Africa, Southwest Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and the U.S. as an emergency medicine physician and has engaged in invisible populations public health research. A leader in U.S. trafficking response efforts, Dr. Chisolm-Straker has co-edited two seminal textbooks on U.S.-based labor and sex trafficking and helped develop the country’s public health framing of anti-trafficking action. Dr. Chisolm-Straker is exploring how structural reparations can eliminate system-based precarity and her Spring 2024 course (History Department) is entitled, “Precarity as policy: A U.S. history of structural inequity.”

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María Cecilia is a visiting fellow at the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre and an assistant professor at the School of Government at Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, where she teaches qualitative methods. She is also a research officer for the project “Pathways to reconciliation in Colombia” at the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the LSE.

Maria Cecilia is a socio-cultural psychologist. Her research focuses on adolescent development under contextual adversity with a focus on the group and cultural level dynamics that shape both positive and negative psychological outcomes in these contexts. Her PhD project, completed at the LSE, focused on violent and non-violent socialisation processes amongst the young in Colombia. The research looked comparatively at resilient youth and gang-involved youth to identify the similarities and the differences between “positive” and “negative” youth groups, the key differences in moral reasoning about violence between members of these groups, and what works for violence prevention. To do this, she employed mixed methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and surveys.

María Cecilia is a consultant for the World Health Organization and the World Bank, and has conducted mixed-methods research to evaluate the development process of global guidelines and the decision making process of health stakeholders at the global level. She has worked for several years doing research on the subjective experience of mental disorders by culturally diverse populations in the United States and has also researched the processes of identity formation, resilience, and moral reasoning among Afro-descendants and internally displaced young adults in Colombia, as well as undocumented young adults in the US.

She holds a master’s degree in the social sciences from the University of Chicago and a degree in clinical psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

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Crépin Marius Mouguia is a PhD student in anthropology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and a lecturer-researcher (temporary) in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Bangui (Central African Republic).He is currently conducting research on childhood and youth during long-term conflict in the Central African Republic from a historical as well as an anthropological perspective. His fields of research are, among others, the environment and sustainable development, themes on which he carried out his Master's research.Recently junior researcher for Unicef ​​in a research project consisting of taking a retrospective look at the reintegration programs for children associated with armed forces and groups in the Central African Republic, he is currently continuing his field research in the north-west, in the center, in the center- east and in the capital Bangui. He has since made a career in various research projects, but also in international humanitarian NGOs in various emergency, early recovery and development projects.

Marni Sommer, DrPH, MSN, RN, has worked in global health and development on issues ranging from improving access to essential medicines to humanitarian relief in conflict settings. Dr. Sommer's particular areas of expertise include conducting participatory research with adolescents, understanding and promoting healthy transitions to adulthood, the intersection of public health and education, gender and sexual health, and the implementation and evaluation of adolescent-focused interventions. Her doctoral research explored girls' experiences of menstruation, puberty and schooling in Tanzania, and the ways in which the onset of puberty might be disrupting girls' academic performance and healthy transition to adulthood. Dr. Sommer presently leads the Gender, Adolescent Transitions and Environment (GATE) Program, based in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. GATE explores the intersections of gender, health, education and the environment for girls and boys transitioning into adulthood in low-income countries and in the United States. GATE also generates research and practical resources focused on improving the integration of menstrual hygiene management and gender-supportive sanitation solutions into global humanitarian response.

Martha Bragin, PhD, LCSW, is a Chairperson of Global Social Work and Practice with Immigrants and Refugees. She is a member of the IASC Reference Group (UN-NGO) on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, which developed the first international consensus guidelines for the field of mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian crises, as well as technical advisor to the International Network for Education in Emergencies. Dr. Bragin has helped foster sustainable change to countries in crisis by supporting governments to develop locality based social work standards and create culturally relevant social work curricula. Recent projects have included Vietnam and Afghanistan. Dr. Bragin’s work on social work program development engages local partners to support women, children, and young people affected by violence and disaster to participate in the transformation of the communities in which they live. To insure the effectiveness of these programs she has and developed and published culturally sensitive ways to measure their effectiveness, including the Community Participatory Evaluation Tool (CPET) for use to determine baseline indicators of children’s well-being and development in cultural context. Current research includes a participatory study defining and operationalizing the concept “psychosocial wellbeing” among war affected women in Nepal Burundi and Uganda, and another on classroom based interventions to improve educational outcomes for adolescents affected by war and community violence.

Mary Mendenhall, Ed.D. is an Associate Professor of Practice and the Director of the International and Comparative Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her current research interests include policies and practices of refugee education across camp, urban and resettlement contexts; teacher support and professional development in crisis settings; and the relevance and sustainability of education support provided by international organizations to displaced children and youth in conflict-affected states in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past three years, Dr. Mendenhall led the design, planning and implementation of Teachers for Teachers, a continuous professional development initiative for refugee and national teachers working in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Over the next three years, she will lead a research team working on a new project in Uganda and South Sudan through and EU-funded initiative called Building Resilience in Conflict through Education. Dr. Mendenhall serves as a member of the Standards and Practice Working Group for the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) and helps lead the work of the Teachers in Crisis Contexts Collaborative, an inter-agency effort to provide continuous, quality professional development to teachers working in displacement contexts. She also serves as an advisor to the Right to Education Initiative and the Center for Learning in Practice (CLiP) at the Carey Institute for Global Good.

Mohamadou Sall, PhD was born in 1963 in Richard Toll, Northern Senegal. His credentials include a BSc in Geography (UCAD, Senegal), a MSc in Demography (IFORD, Cameroon), a postgraduate diploma, and a PhD in Population-Development-Environment Interactions (UCL, Belgium). He is a Professor of Population Studies at the Institute for Training and Research in Population, Development and Health Reproduction (IPDSR) of the Cheikh Diop University in Dakar, Senegal and since May 2017, the Director of this Institute. He oversees the following courses: Introduction to Population Studies (An Interdisciplinary Perspective), Demographic analysis with a focus on Mortality Analysis, Population Doctrines, Methodology of Research, Population and Development, Population Policies and Programs, SPSS Software. He has been involved in many studies related to maternal and child health, community health, child protection, international migration, fertility transition, HIV/AIDS, poverty, and education as P.I. or Co-P.I. In the field of children in adversity, Professor Sall has participated with ENTSS, the Senegalese National School of Social Work and UNICEF of the studies on Child Protection in 4 regions of Senegal (Kolda, Dakar, Sedhiou and Matam). He also did a relevant research on girls’ marginality and care in Senegal with a special focus on social, demographic and economic factors that lead to marginality. Professor Sall has also been involved in research related to problems facing young refugees in the African urban context, comparing their situation in Abidjan and Dakar to their situation in Geneva, Switzerland. He has also been interested in the representations of the young Senegalese people on western countries that explain their migrations choices including their illegal and risky crossings through Atlantic and Mediterranean seas.

Monette Zard is an expert on forced migration and human rights, and her career has spanned the fields of policy, advocacy and philanthropy. She has served as the Global Human Rights Program Officer at the Ford Foundation in New York and as Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva, Switzerland, a think tank focused on applied human rights research. Her work there explored issues of political violence and the human rights obligations of armed groups, economic and social rights and human smuggling. From 2000-2003, she was a Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington D.C. and held a visiting research fellowship in law at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University. Prior to that, she directed the international refugee work of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, during which time her work focused on the use of legal strategies to strengthen refugee protection in Africa as well as the particular issue of how international law should deal with refugees and asylum-seekers accused of committing serious international crimes. She has consulted on international human rights and forced migration issues for a number of organizations including Amnesty International, the Brookings Institute, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Sabrina is an Assistant Professor in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Affiliated Faculty with the CPC Learning Network (’07 CPC Learning Network practica placement alumna). In addition to her position at Columbia, she serves on the Board of Directors for Roots of Health and facilitates the Research and Evaluation Thematic Group for the Olympic Refuge Foundation Think Tank. Sabrina’s work seeks to improve the health of populations affected by conflict and displacement through rigorous scholarship, innovative and applied pedagogy, and effective mentorship and service. She is dedicated to engaging in projects and initiatives that center children’s voices and agency, seek to address both proximal and distal/structural sources of violence and harm, with a focus on active prevention and destruction of harmful structures and purposeful co-creation of spaces that support healthy development, psychosocial wellbeing, and eventually happy, thriving, just societies.   Sabrina is a dedicated educator, researcher, and collaborator born in Poughkeepsie, NY and raised across New York, West Germany, and Chile. Sabrina has a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Colgate University, holds an MIA and MPH from Columbia University, an MS from The City College of New York, and completed her PhD in epidemiology from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She speaks English and Spanish fluently and has previously worked in French, Mandarin, Nepali, and Russian. She has nearly two decades of experience designing and implementing studies in humanitarian contexts. In her free time Sabrina is a dedicated parent (fur and human), runner, soccer enthusiast, election poll worker, and environmentalist, who centers the environmental and social justice impact of her daily activities to create a more just and harmonious living environment for all.

Dr. Sandra Garcia is an Associate Professor in the School of Government at the University of Los Andes in Colombia. She teaches Policy Evaluation, Quantitative Methods, and Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. She conducts research on social policy, particularly child and family policy, health and education disparities, and children poverty. Sandra has extensive experience on the impact evaluation of social programs in educational and health outcomes. Sandra recently served as the Principal Investigator for UNICEF-funded research project that developed participatory measures of poverty and wellbeing in children and adolescents. She was also the Principal Investigator for Fundacion Corona-funded research project that developed a mixed-methods methodology to examine the determinants or early school dropout in Colombia. She received her MPA in 1999 and her PhD in Social Work in 2007 from Columbia University.

Sara Casey focuses on using sound data collection and analysis to improve the availability and quality of sexual and reproductive health services in countries whose health systems have been weakened by war or natural disaster. Dr. Casey is Director of the Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE) Initiative, a global program collaborating with program partners to identify and respond to challenges to improve contraceptive and abortion-related services in humanitarian settings in Africa and Asia. She provides technical guidance to partners to establish program monitoring and evaluation systems and conduct health facility assessments, population-based surveys and other implementation research.

Sarah Meyer, PhD, MPhil, is an assistant professor in clinical population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She has extensive experience managing and leading research projects focused on migration, child protection and mental health in humanitarian and low-income settings. Her PhD research focused on migration and mental health on the Thailand-Burma border, and she has led qualitative and quantitative training and data collection in Cambodia, Rwanda, Uganda and Thailand. She is currently the co-investigator on a joint study between the CPC Learning Network and UNHCR, on measuring child protection in refugee settings. She has led evaluations of mental health and psychosocial support for UNHCR and the Interagency Standing Committee Reference Group on mental health and psychosocial support. She has presented her research in academic and policy settings in Geneva, Kolkata, Lisbon, Salzburg, Oxford and Melbourne. Sarah received a PhD in International Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a certificate in Applied Mental Health Research from Johns Hopkins, an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA from Monash University.

A passionate, well skilled, and motivated Sociologist/Behavioral, mental Health Specialist & Social Worker, with over 25 years of clinical experience in mental and behavioral health. With a track record of safe protecting and promoting the welfare of children, adolescents and vulnerable adults. Knowledgeable in providing individual, groups, communities and family counseling. Provide psychosocial assessments to referred clients.

Multi tasked and able to manage a patient’s mental health issues based upon an appropriate assessment and identified signs and symptoms associated with mental, behavioral, or physical health to include substance abuse; and provide or make the appropriate treatment or referral. Supervised multidisciplinary teams combined with nurses, social workers, psychologists, education professionals, other professional clinicians, social & juvenile justice advocates to include psychiatrists.

Susan Walker, PhD is Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Caribbean Institute for Health Research at The University of the West Indies, Jamaica. She heads the Child Development Research Group whose work on low cost approaches to promote children’s cognitive and social-emotional development has been critical in driving global attention to the importance of responsive interactions and early learning opportunities for children under 3 years. Recent work includes evaluation of parenting programs feasible at scale in three Caribbean countries; development and evaluation of a training package “Reach Up: An Early Childhood Parenting Programme” based on the Jamaica home visit program, and the 30 year follow-up of the Jamaica supplementation and stimulation trial. She was lead author in papers in the highly influential Lancet series on child development (2007, 2011), author in the 2016 series, and a coordinator of the 2013 series on Maternal and Child Nutrition. She was a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally, and is a founding member of the Global Child Development Group (GCDG) which promotes research on child development and translation of research to policy.

Dr.Andia is an economist and historian from the Universidad de los Andes with a Masters in Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a PhD in Sociology from Brown University. Her thesis “Bureaucrats against the State: the making of pharmaceutical policy in Latin America” compares the experience of Brazil and Colombia from the 1990s to today and analyzes the leading role played by experts in public health and other fields, temporary visitors to the State, they played in the design of the pharmaceutical policies of both countries. In addition to my PhD in Sociology, I completed the Graduate Program in Development at the Watson Institute at the same university. She joined the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Universidad de los Andes to contribute to the creation and implementation of the option and the master's and undergraduate programs in sociology. Before that, Dr.Andia worked at the Center for Interdisciplinary Development Studies (CIDER) at the Universidad de los Andes, first as director of academic programs and later as a professor.  She has always been interested in the political economy of development, particularly as it relates to health inequalities, the tensions between global economic integration and the guarantee of social rights, and the theories of the state and social movements. She was an advisor to the Minister of Health for pharmaceutical policy, administrative editor of the journal Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID) and has carried out consulting projects for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) on drug prices, health litigation and intellectual property and public health standards.  Currently, Dr.Andia coordinates the "Visible Health" project, which was created with a group of students from different faculties to investigate and make visible the fundamental elements and events of the Colombian Health System, in order to transform said knowledge into information for public consumption and plausible recommendations. of public policy.

Theresa S. Betancourt, ScD, MA, is director of the Research Program on Children and Adversity (RPCA). Her central research interests include the developmental and psychosocial consequences of concentrated adversity on children, youth and families; resilience and protective processes in child and adolescent mental health and child development; refugee families; and applied cross-cultural mental health research. She is Principal Investigator of an intergenerational study of war/prospective longitudinal study of war-affected youth in Sierra Leone (LSWAY). This research led to the development of a group mental health intervention for war-affected youth that demonstrated effectiveness for improving emotion regulation, daily functioning and school functioning in war-affected youth. This intervention, the Youth Readiness Intervention (YRI), is now at the core of a scale-up study within youth employment programs now underway in collaboration with the World Bank and Government of Sierra Leone as a part of the NIMH-funded Mental Health Services and Implementation Science Research Hub called Youth FORWARD

Betancourt has also developed and evaluated the impact of a Family Strengthening Intervention for HIV-affected children and families and is leading the investigation of a home-visiting early childhood development (ECD) intervention to promote enriched parent-child relationships and prevent violence. This intervention, called Sugira Muryango (Strengthen the Family), has a focus on father engagement and violence reduction and can be integrated within poverty reduction/social protection initiatives in low-resource settings. With support from The LEGO Foundation, the RPCA will be conducting implementation research on the PLAY Collaborative, a multi-level strategy to scale out the intervention to all families ranked as living in extreme poverty across three Districts in Rwanda in the years ahead. Domestically, she is engaged in community-based participatory research on family-based prevention of emotional and behavioral problems in refugee children and adolescents resettled in the U.S. She has written extensively on mental health and resilience in children facing adversity including recent articles in Child Development, The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Social Science and Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry, AJPH and PLOS One. Her work has been profiled in the New Yorker, National Geographic, NPR, CNN.com and in an interview with Larry King.