Presenters

Dr. Perry is the Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, a not-for-profit organization based in Houston, TX and adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. He serves as the inaugural Senior Fellow of the Berry Street Childhood Institute, an Australian based center of excellence focusing on the translation of theory into practice to improve the lives of children. Dr. Perry is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered. His most recent multimedia books, BRIEF: Reflections on Childhood, Trauma and Society and RESILIENT: Six Core Strengths for Healthy Development were released in 2013. Over the last thirty years, Dr. Perry has been an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety of academic positions.

 

Dr. Perry was on the faculty of the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago School Of Medicine from 1988 to 1991. From 1992 to 2001, Dr. Perry served as the Trammell Research Professor of Child Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. During this time, Dr. Perry also was Chief of Psychiatry for Texas Children's Hospital and Vice-Chairman for Research within the Department of Psychiatry. From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Perry served as the Medical Director for Provincial Programs in Children's Mental Health for the Alberta Mental Health Board. He continues to consult with the government of Alberta on children’s issues and serves as a founding member of the Premier’s Council of Alberta’s Promise.

 

Dr. Perry has conducted both basic neuroscience and clinical research. His neuroscience research has examined the effects of prenatal drug exposure on brain development, the neurobiology of human neuropsychiatric disorders, the neurophysiology of traumatic life events and basic mechanisms related to the development of neurotransmitter receptors in the brain. His clinical research and practice has focused on high-risk children. This work has examined the cognitive, behavioral, emotional, social, and physiological effects of neglect and trauma in children, adolescents and adults. This work has been instrumental in describing how childhood experiences, including neglect and traumatic stress, change the biology of the brain – and, thereby, the health of the child.

 

His clinical research over the last ten years has been focused on integrating emerging principles of developmental neuroscience into clinical practice. This work has resulted in the development of innovative clinical practices and programs working with maltreated andtraumatized children, most prominently the Neurosequential Model©, a developmentally sensitive, neurobiology-informed approach to clinical work (NMT), education (NME) and caregiving (NMC). This approach to clinical problem solving has been integrated into the programs at dozens of large public and non-profit organizations serving at-risk children and their families.

 

His experience as a clinician and a researcher with traumatized children has led many community and governmental agencies to consult Dr. Perry following high-profile incidents involving traumatized children such as the Branch Davidian siege in Waco (1993), the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Columbine school shootings (1999), the September 11th terrorist attacks (2001), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the FLDS polygamist sect (2008), the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the tsunami in Tohoku Japan (2011) and the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings (2012).

 

Dr. Perry is the author of over 500 journal articles, book chapters and scientific proceedings and is the recipient of numerous professional awards and honors, including the T. Berry Brazelton Infant Mental Health Advocacy Award, the Award for Leadership in Public Child Welfare and the Alberta Centennial Medal.

 

He has presented about child maltreatment, children's mental health, neurodevelopment and youth violence in a variety of venues including policy-making bodies such as the White House Summit on Violence, the California Assembly and U.S. House Committee on Education. Dr. Perry has been featured in a wide range of media including National Public Radio, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS News and the Oprah Winfrey Show. His work has been featured in documentaries produced by Dateline NBC, 20/20, the BBC, Nightline, CBC, PBS, as well as dozen international documentaries. Many print media have highlighted the clinical and research activities of Dr. Perry including a Pulitzer-prize winning series in the Chicago Tribune, US News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, Forbes ASAP, Washington Post, the New York Times and Rolling Stone.

 

Dr. Perry, a native of Bismarck, North Dakota, was an undergraduate at Stanford University and Amherst College. He attended medical and graduate school at Northwestern University, receiving both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. Dr. Perry completed a residency in general psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at The University of Chicago.

Vincent J. Felitti, MD, is a noted physician and researcher on how adverse childhood experiences affect adults. He is co-principal investigator of the internationally recognized Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, a long-term, in-depth, retrospective, and prospective analysis of over 17,000 adults that revealed a powerful relationship between our emotional experiences as children and our physical and mental health as adults, as well as a strong link to the major causes of adult mortality in the United States.

 

In his keynote addresses, Dr. Felitti discusses the ACE Study and its relevance to everyday medicine, mental health, and healthcare costs. Defying conventional belief, he explains that time does not heal all wounds, since humans convert traumatic emotional experiences in childhood into organic disease later in life. One does not "just get over" something, not even 50 years later.

 

Vincent Felitti is clinical professor of medicine at the University of California and a Fellow of The American College of Physicians. He is senior editor of The Permanente Journal and on the international editorial board of the Swiss medical journal Trauma und Gewalt. He founded the Department of Preventive Medicine for Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, California, in 1975 and served as chief of preventive medicine until March 2001. Under Dr. Felitti's leadership, the Health Appraisal Division of the Department of Preventive Medicine provided comprehensive medical evaluation to 1.1 million individuals, becoming the largest single-site medical evaluation facility in the western world. During his career, associated health risk abatement programs included weight loss, smoking cessation, stress management, and a wide range of cutting-edge risk abatement programs offered to over 1,000 patients per month.

 

Dr. Felitti has served on advisory committees of the Institute of Medicine, the American Psychiatric Association, and on the Committee of the Secretary of Health and Human Services for Healthy People 2020. Presently, he is a member of the Advisory Committee on Women's Services at SAMHSA. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Medical School (1962) and a physician in the Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

Ginny Sprang, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of Kentucky in the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Co-Chair of the NCTSN Secondary Traumatic Stress Collaborative Group. Dr. Sprang is Executive Director of the UK Center on Trauma and Children and Principal Investigator of the SAMHSA funded Child and Adolescent Trauma Treatment and Training Institute, a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Dr. Sprang has published extensively in leading books and journals focusing on violence, maltreatment, and traumatic stress in families, children and professionals, and holds leadership positions in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Erica Miller, Ph. D is a holocaust survivor, clinical Psychologist, and accomplished author. From age 7 to 11, she and her family lived in a Nazi holding camp in the Ukraine. Later in life she developed a number of mental health clinics in Southern California and now serves as motivational speaker and expert on trauma. Her expertise in surviving trauma from a personal and clinical perspective is profound and informative.