Tackling ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) State of the Art and Options for Action – Jack Tizard Memorial Conference

About the speakers

Professor Mark Bellis is Director of Research and Innovation at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and also leads the University’s Public Health Institute. As Professor of Public Health and Behaviour Sciences at LJMU, Mark undertakes research in Adverse Childhood Experiences, violence prevention, alcohol, drugs and sexual health. Mark frequently works with the World Health Organization (WHO) and has established two WHO Collaborating Centres (in Violence Prevention and, Investment in Health and Well-being). He is a registered Consultant in Public Health in the NHS and has published over 240 academic papers and more than 300 applied public health reports and books.

Dr. Jessie Baldwin is a senior research fellow funded by the Wellcome Trust. She completed her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s College London, before moving to University College London. Dr Baldwin’s research aims to understand the role of adverse childhood experiences in mental health. As part of her Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship, she is investigating the extent to which adverse childhood experience cause mental health problems. This involves using causal inference methods to disentangle the effects of adversities from other genetic and environmental risk factors. I have experience in family designs (e.g., twin-based methods), polygenic scoring, and statistical approaches (e.g., propensity score matching).

Professor Judith Cohen is Professor of Psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine in Pittsburgh PA, Medical Director of Allegheny General Hospital Center for Traumatic Stress in Children & Adolescents, and a Board Certified Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist. She is also co-developer of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), a child trauma treatment with a very strong evidence base that has been broadly implemented and disseminated for diverse populations and trauma types. Dr. Cohen maintains an active clinical and research practice focused on applying, implementing and disseminating TF-CBT particularly for youth at high risk.

Professor David Finkelhor has been working since 1978 on the epidemiology of childhood maltreatment and adversity. He developed the framework and research around the concept of poly-victimization, an important component of the ACEs scholarship. He has developed revised ACE scales, and several articles on issues related to measurement and screening.

Dr. Kirsten Asmussen is a developmental psychologist with expertise in the parent/child relationship and author of the Evidence-Based Parenting Practitioner’s Handbook (Routledge, 2011). Kirsten has extensive experience in assessing and translating evidence about children’s development for policy and practice audiences. Examples of recent ‘translations’ include “Adverse Childhood Experiences: What we know, what we don’t know and what will happen next’ and ‘What works to improve the lives of England’s most vulnerable children?’ Prior to joining the Early Intervention Foundations (now Foundations: What works centre for children and families).

Dr. Fiona Turner is a post-doctoral Research Fellow and Health Psychologist in the Department of Health & Wellbeing at University of Glasgow. Her research areas include child mental health and interventions after abuse and neglect in early life, foster care, neurodiversity and the overlap between trauma and neurodevelopmental conditions.

Gary Kainth is a graduate Research Associate and Social Worker at University of Glasgow working on the BeST? trial. He is currently working towards a PhD investigating the impact of legal decisions on long-term mental health outcomes for maltreated children and he has a broader interest in how the context in which services are delivered influences outcomes.

Dr. Alan Meehan is a Lecturer in Psychology (Education) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. His research career has sought to identify processes of risk and resilience for child and adolescent mental health problems, with a particular focus on childhood trauma and adversity. This work has drawn extensively on data from longitudinal cohorts and, more recently, electronic patient records drawn from real-world mental health services. His current research aims to apply novel prediction modelling and machine learning approaches to enhance identification of mental health risk among young people in both community and clinical settings.

Joanne Hopkins is the Programme Director for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Criminal Justice and Violence Prevention at Public Health Wales. A former UK government Senior Civil Servant, Jo worked for the Home Office delivering the 2010 cross UK government strategy ‘Together we can end Violence Against Women and Girls’ and then seven years as the senior lead for Wales and Devolution. Jo was seconded to Public Health Wales in 2018 to take on the role of Director of the ACE Support Hub, transforming systems to develop an ACE aware, trauma informed approach across public services, communities, and society.