AC21 - IIB - Part 2: Better Than Nothing or Better Than Anything? Virtual Contact With Families and Lessons Learned From the COVID-19 Pandemic

As a pediatric nurse and clinical psychologist, Dr. Zeanah's lifelong focus has been on the interface of health and mental health in primary and tertiary settings. She has held a variety of nursing positions, including staff nurse, pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP), and in nursing education and nursing administration, as well as full-time faculty positions in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at LSUHSC (1993-1998) and at Tulane (1998-2015), where she served as the Chief of the Psychology Division and co-directed the Pediatric-Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison service (consultation with medically hospitalized children). Additionally, from 1997-2015, she served as the Clinical Director of the Louisiana Office of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health's Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program. With the Bureau of Family Health, Dr. Zeanah developed and continues to provide the Foundations of Infant Mental Health educational program, available statewide to nursing and other professionals serving families of infants and young children. She also developed and directed the infant mental health service augmentation for the state's nurse home visiting program, one of the first of its kind in the U.S. In 2015, Dr. Zeanah became the Lafayette General Medical Center/Our Lady of Lourdes Endowed Chair in Nursing, College of Nursing and Allied Health Professions and Research Director at the Picard Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She continues to pursue her clinical and research interests on the impact of chronic illness and trauma/early adversity on children and families; perinatal, infant, and early childhood mental health; and adolescent and early adulthood sexuality. Her current projects include mental health education for nurse home visitors, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and a brand new project focusing on the challenges, resources, and needs of college students who are also parents. She is developing research and educational opportunities for faculty and students regarding ACEs at UL Lafayette and the Lafayette community, and consults with state and national service and policy organizations on research and other issues related to infant mental health and home visiting. She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and is a frequent presenter at local, national, and international professional meetings. Dr. Zeanah obtained a Diploma in Nursing from Piedmont Hospital School of Nursing in Atlanta, and received her BSN from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, GA. She received a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Certificate and completed the MSN from the University of Virginia School of Nursing in Charlottesville, VA. She received a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and completed an internship in pediatric and child psychology with the Brown University Internship Consortium in Providence, RI.

Cristina Galto is a faculty associate in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. She earned her Masters in Social Work and Bachelors in Psychology from Arizona State University. She has worked more than 15 years in the social service industry in a variety of positions, from case management to providing clinical services to children, youth and families. Cristina has had a variety of clinical training experiences related to trauma, play therapy modalities and early childhood. Through her experience in advocacy centers and the behavioral health field, she has focused her career on the effects of trauma intergenerationally and the importance of early childhood mental health. She has devoted much of her time to non-profit management, community organization, volunteer engagement, trauma training within multiple disciplines and behavioral health.

Jon Korfmacher, PhD, has devoted his career to forwarding scientific knowledge and applying what he and others have learned in practical ways related to home visitation. He joined Chapin Hall after over twenty years on the faculty at Erikson Institute, where he directed the Illinois Child Parent Psychotherapy Learning Collaborative, a project supporting community clinicians in the use of Child Parent Psychotherapy with young children and their families exposed to trauma. Dr. Korfmacher studies programs that provide in-home parenting support and links to community services for at-risk families in order to improve young children's health and well-being. His work focuses on understanding why families can have such different experiences in these programs and what kinds of support can improve their effectiveness. Dr. Korfmacher is a member of the leadership team of the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC), a national network focused on supporting effective home visiting practice through innovative research designs. He has also earned a strong reputation among early childhood professionals around the world for work, as home visiting has become more common in countries outside the United States. He brings an international perspective, having advised home visiting programs in Brazil, Chile, and China and provided consultation to UNICEF in its initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe. Dr. Korfmacher is a Zero to Three Fellow and currently chairs the Annual Conference Program Workgroup

Mark is an Associate Research Professor. in the Center for Persons with Disabilities, a University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, and in Psychology at Utah State University. Mark has 40 years of experience working with infants and young children at-risk and with disabilities and their families through multiple research and model demonstration projects. He has examined areas such as social interaction, child transition, naturalistic intervention, parent-child interaction, and service system effectiveness. More recently, he has focused on various aspects of home visiting and preschool intervention services. Mark is an author of Developmental Parenting: A Guide for Early Childhood Practitioners, the PICCOLO (Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes) parent-child interaction observation measure and the HOVRS (Home Visit Rating Scales) an observational measure of home visiting practices. Mark is a past-president of the Division for Early Childhood and a member of the Zero to Three Fellows Academy.