Patti Park has extensive experience in executive and senior leadership positions in community mental health organizations serving children and families throughout Los Angeles County, and has been providing direct clinical services since 2001. She was involved in the planning and implementation of Proposition 63 funded trauma-focused and evidence-based programs in L.A. County. She has served on county best practices committees to enhance assessment and treatment for children involved in the child welfare system. Her most recent agencybased leadership role was as Regional Director for Children’s Institute, Inc. In this position, she provided strategic and organizational leadership to develop and sustain comprehensive trauma-focused and evidence-based programs to children and families suffering from the intersecting effects of poverty, oppression and trauma. She integrates her clinical and leadership experiences into her teaching role at UC Berkeley, where she teaches theory and clinical practice courses through a trauma-informed lens. She has also taught at UCLA and CSU Dominguez Hills. In addition to teaching, Dr. Park maintains a private practice where she provides psychotherapy and consultation services.
Patti Park, PsyD
Pauter, Sarah, MPPA
Sarah Pauter is the founder and CEO of Phenomenal Families, a nonprofit organization that provides pregnant and parenting youth in foster care and juvenile probation access to education and other resources which promote healthy relationships, sexual development, and positive parenting skills. After spending 17 years in the child welfare system before ultimately emancipating, Sarah earned a Bachelor’s in Social Work from San Diego State University and a Master’s in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University. Sarah has dedicated her life and career to improving outcomes for vulnerable children and youth, even testifying before Congress and the California Senate on mental health treatment options for young people in foster care. Sarah was previously a Trauma-Informed Systems Transformation Specialist with the Chadwick Center for Children and Families where she co-led the development of the Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit (3rd ed.). Her skills include partnering with children, youth, and families, policy formulation and implementation, and stakeholder engagement.
Pediatric Stress and Anxiety Disorders Clinic
The Pediatric Stress and Anxiety Disorders Clinic (PSADC) at the University of Illinois, Chicago, specializes in early identification, comprehensive evaluation, and evidence-based treatment of stress and anxiety disorders in diverse youth from age 4 years through older adolescents. The multi-disciplinary PSADC team strives to work with families to create an individualized treatment program tailored to each patient and their symptoms. Individualized treatment programming may include cognitive behavioral therapy, parent guidance, family therapy, coordination with schools for school-based interventions, and medication management. PSADC is a Community Treatment Center site of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Through its newly funded project, Service-partners Promoting Awareness, Resilience, and Knowledge-based Solutions (SPARKS), PSADC strives to provide a comprehensive, coordinated, and collaborative set of evidence-based trauma informed services to address this multiplicity of clinical care needs among targeted Chicagoland youth and families. Clinicians and researchers work collaboratively in the PSADC to understand risk and protective factors in diverse youth with anxiety disorders, facilitate transportability of evidence-based practices for anxiety to the school and community, and explore neurobiological correlates of childhood anxiety. Project SPARKS serves to increase evidence-based strategies for outreach, engagement, screening, assessment, prevention, and intervention strategies along with supporting continued protocol implementation, increased cultural competence, child service system coordination and resource exchange in the Chicago metropolitan and suburban areas.
Penfield Children's Center- Behavior Clinic
Penfield Children's Center (PCC) will use SAMHSA funding to provide evidence-based home-based trauma-focused treatment in Milwaukee County, WI, as well as expand services to neighboring Waukesha County, for children, ages 0 to 6, who have been exposed to (experienced or witnessed) potentially traumatic events and have trauma symptoms. A total of 1,625 children and their families will be served (275 in Year 1, 300 in Year 2, and 350 in each of years 3-5). The EBP, Early Pathways (EP), was developed specifically at PCC to treat very young children exposed to trauma by Marquette University (MU) faculty. The success of this home-based approach for this population has been well-documented in multiple studies, including four randomized controlled trials (RCTs) documenting effectiveness for reducing disruptive behavior disorders and externalizing/antisocial behaviors, improving the family-child relationship, improving general functioning and well-being, improving social functioning/competence, reducing unspecified and other mental health disorders, and improving parenting behaviors.
Pfefferbaum, Betty, MD, JD
Betty Pfefferbaum was the former Director of the Terrorism and Disaster Center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is now retired but remains professionally active.
Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services
The Philadelphia Alliance for Child Trauma Services II (PACTS)has been awarded a 5 year (October 1st 2016 to September 30th 2021) Community Treatment Center (Category III) grant by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (S.A.M.H.S.A.) through a National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative. PACTS: Reaching the Most Vulnerable Youth is a child and adolescent behavioral and physical health system-wide trauma universal screening, education, prevention and intervention program, with a focus on the most vulnerable and underserved youth: young children (2-6 years old); Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth; Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC); and intentionally injured youth (IY). We will primarily serve children eligible for Medicaid( which is a large percentage of the population of children in Philadelphia) under the age of 18 as well as transitional youth ages 18-21 in these populations. We have selected 3 trauma-specific evidence-based practices to serve our youth and families: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(TF-CBT); Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention(CFTSI) and the Child and Adult Relationship Enhancement(CARE) group parenting training. We will partner with the following child-service systems: Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice, Physical Health, School District of Philadelphia, Crisis Response, Faith Based and Grass-roots organizations.
Pollard, Sara, PhD
Dr. Sara Pollard, ABPP, is a board certified Couple and Family Psychologist. She completed a postdoctoral psychology fellowship with the Georgia Child Traumatic Stress Initiative (GCTSI), an NCTSN Category III center and collaboration between Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University School of Medicine. She is certified in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and is a Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) International Certified Therapist and Level 1 Trainer. Dr. Pollard provides therapy, testing, and integrated primary care services for children in foster care at Children's Health in Dallas and supervises a postdoc fellow. She is especially interested in projects related to integrated care, child welfare, STS, EC/DD, RPC/parent training, and cultural and systems issues.
Project EPIC - Trauma and Community Resilience Center at Boston Children's Hospital
Project EPIC - Enhancing Pediatric Integrative Care combines the content and clinical expertise of Boston Children’s Hospital Centers in Boston, MA: the Boston Children's Hospital Primary Care Center (CHPCC), its satellite community primary care clinic Martha Eliot Health Center (MEHC), and the Trauma and Community Resilience Center (TCRC). More specifically, Project EPIC recognizes primary care pediatric clinics as an advantageous place for delivering mental health services for children, especially ethnocultural minority youth and is embedded within CHPCC and MEHC’s Behavioral Health Integration teams. Project EPIC aims to increase access and engagement of youth and their families who have experienced trauma, with a specific focus on racial/ethnic minority youth and refugee/immigrant youth. To achieve our aim, we will implement Trauma Systems Therapy (TST) and components of its adaptation for refugees (TST-R). TST-R is a multitier model designed to address barriers to treatment access and engagement. TST-R partners cultural brokers with clinicians for service delivery. Cultural brokers are community members who represent the cultural group intended to be engaged and ensure that the culture, language, and worldview of the client are integrated into clinical practice. Project EPIC leverages cultural knowledge through the use of cultural brokers and bi- or multi-cultural clinical staff. Importantly, we partner with other Massachusetts organizations to achieve our mission namely the Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center (RIAC) and the Home for Little Wanderers (HFLW) and other NCTSN Cat II sites, namely NYU Center for Child Welfare Practice Innovation.
Public Health Institute
Our Lotus Project will provide workshops, webinars, and consultation regarding trauma-informed care and prevention for Asian and Pacific Islander (API) children and families in the U.S. In collaboration with the Professional Advisory Board and Community Advisory Board members, we will address culturally competent trauma-informed care and prevention for API children and families through our project website and the national networks of service providers and public officers.
Puccia, Ellen, PhD
Ellen Puccia is an evaluator with projects in child trauma and welfare as well as education. She has experience administering learning collaboratives in evidence-based practices for child trauma as well as for community partners. As an anthropologist, Ellen is also a expert in qualitative research methods.