Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children Hires First Director
CINCINNATI -- The Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati has hired Frank Putnam, M.D., as its first director. Dr. Putnam is a renowned child and adolescent psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment and research of the effects of violence on children.
The Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children aims to enhance the ability of families, organizations and professionals to provide safe and healthy environments for children, as well as to prevent, identify, and treat child abuse and neglect.
"We are interested in creating a world class center which helps us all take good care of our children. This involves helping parents do their best and helping the systems of support work together effectively when things go wrong," says Neal H. Mayerson, Ph.D., president of the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation.
The center, in partnership with Every Child Succeeds and a variety of community agencies, is implementing the largest-ever comprehensive support program for families and professionals who work with them. This support program is designed to promote healthy children and address problems early in life, thus preventing long-term consequences.
The center also is establishing an advocacy program, which will bring the medical, justice, law enforcement, and social service systems together to collaborate on cases of actual and suspected child abuse. This program will create a much more child-friendly and healing experience for abused or neglected children and will help in the successful prosecution of perpetrators.
The advocacy program will be directed by Robert Shapiro, M.D., of the Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati Emergency Medicine Division.
Pat Myers, L.I.S.W., director of Social Services, will be associate director. Dr. Shapiro and Myers have co-chaired Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati Child Abuse Team since the mid 1980s.
Additionally, the Center, in collaboration with the Childhood Trust, a Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati program founded and directed by Barbara Boat, Ph.D., will dedicate itself to stopping the pain of child abuse through innovative professional education and behavioral evaluation and treatment of victims.
The Mayerson Center also will also be training medical and social service providers and helping the community do a better job of identifying children and families in need of help.
The Cincinnati Center for Developmental Disorders, an affiliate of Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati, will lend its expertise to abused children who have neurological impairment. Finally, the Center will conduct leading edge research -- a component that will distinguish this center from programs elsewhere.
"What we have in mind does not exist anywhere in the country," says Dr. Putnam. "The integration of these resources and talents within the Mayerson Center will produce a program unmatched in its ability to provide services to children and families and to prevent and treat child abuse and neglect."
Dr. Putnam came to Cincinnati from the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C. He earned a medical degree at Indiana University School of Medicine in 1975. He completed a residency in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine in 1979 and a residency in child and adolescent psychiatry at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in 1989.
Dr. Putnam has earned many prestigious awards, including the U.S. Public Health Service Medal of Commendation in 1992 and the Pierre Janet Scientific Writing Award in 1993.
Contact Information
Jim Feuer,
jfeuer@chmcc.org
