CL22 - Baby Talks Group A: Promoting Equity in Preservice and Programs

Christina Bethell, PhD, MBA, MPH, is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and School of Medicine. Her research focuses on building and translating the science of healthy development of children, youth, families, and communities. With roots in national and state health care policy, financing reform, and delivery system redesign, Dr. Bethell is the founding director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) which, since 1996, has worked to promote the early and lifelong health of children, youth, and families through family-centered data, tools, and research. She has developed and advanced an array of child and family health measures to address the social and relational roots of well-being and the quality of health care systems and structures that influence well-being, including nationally and internationally used measures of the family-centered medical home, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), positive childhood experiences, family resilience, child flourishing, and the Whole Child Risk Index. Her research has led to the development of the national Prioritizing Possibilities agenda to prevent and address ACEs and promote child health equity, providing testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on identifying, preventing, and treating childhood trauma, informing the American Academy of Pediatrics relational health policy statement and the design of the Engagement In Action (EnAct!) Framework to catalyze statewide integrated relational systems of care. She earned an MBA and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in public policy and health services research and policy from the University of Chicago. 

Kirsten Roberts is an Attending Pediatrician in the Division of Ambulatory Care at NYC Health and Hospitals/Jacobi. Her areas of interest include programs that support infants and their families (such as HealthySteps and the Mother Baby Clinic), pediatric and adolescent mental health, childhood trauma and resilience, equity in healthcare, and caring for gender diverse youth. She is a member of the Jacobi Pride Center and WPATH. Dr. Roberts is currently Vice Chair of Pediatrics and recently served as an Associate Director of the residency program for three years and continues to greatly enjoy working with, mentoring and supporting pediatric interns and residents. She is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In addition, she facilitates workshops in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and mentors students in Medical Humanities at Sophie Davis School of Biomedicine/CUNY School of Medicine. She serves as a Court Appointed Special Advocate in NYC-Bronx Family Court.

Dr. Michelle Fazio Brunson directs the graduate programs in Early Childhood Education at Northwestern State University of Louisiana and was recently awarded the Jean d'Amato Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in remapping the Cradle to Cradle to Prison Pipeline to a Cradle to College Pipeline in Louisiana, a collaborative effort with her husband, the Natchitoches District Defender. She has presented her research at ILA, NAEYC, NAECTE, ZERO TO THREE, LAECA, SECA, LACUE, LERA, and MSERA. She has been teaching for 25 years.

Dr. Hailey taught in early childhood classrooms in Texas and Louisiana for over 20 years before working in higher education.  She currently teaches at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana where she serves as Assistant Professor of Child and Family Studies.  Her research interests include:

• integrated curriculum especially as it relates to math and literacy; 
• parent education; 
• leadership development, and  
• methods in early childhood teacher development 

She has developed partnerships in different communities to organize grassroots family literacy festivals, receiving along the way awards and grants to continue the work.  She received the “Friend of Children” award, the Phi Kappa Phi Literacy Grant, the Jane Herrin Mini-Grant, the Southern Early Childhood Association Marian B. Hamilton Memorial Award, and funding from other groups such as the Louisiana Early Childhood Association to support and expand the family literacy events. 

Dr. Hailey presents at professional conferences and publishes her peer-reviewed articles in various education journals.