Robert Shapiro, MD, is director of the Child Abuse Team at Children's Hospital Medical Center and director of the Child Abuse and Forensic Pediatrics Fellowship.

Dr. Shapiro's role on the team includes inpatient and outpatient consultations and evaluations for suspected child physical or sexual abuse. These consultations and evaluations are completed in collaboration with a social worker on the team. He also teaches child abuse diagnosis to students, residents and post-graduate fellows.

Dr. Shapiro's research interests include sexually transmitted infections and fractures caused by abuse. The Child Abuse and Forensic Pediatrics Fellowship he directs is a one-year training program for Pediatricians. The fellowship program emphasizes child abuse clinical, research, educational and administrative expertise and advocacy.

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Barbara Walling Boat, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Director of the Program on Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment.  She is also Executive Director of the Childhood Trust at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.  She received a BA in Psychology and Spanish at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota, a MA in Child Behavior and Development at the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in Psychology at Case Western Reserve University. 

In addition to providing evaluation and treatment for children, adolescents and adults, supervising trainees, and presenting at national and international conferences, she has conducted research on the use of anatomical dolls in sexual abuse investigationsand currently studies relationships among animal cruelty, child abuse and domestic violence, including dog bites. She currently is part of a NCTSN grant to assess the effectiveness of a group intervention with incarcerated youth that addresses trauma and grief issues.

Her special clinical interests are treatment of post-traumatic stress and dissociative disorders and the training and utilization of evidenced-based interventions for traumatized children and their families.  

Elena Duma, MD, is a physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children's Hospital Medical Center. She has been at Children's Hospital Medical Center since 1991, with five years as a clinical staff physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine.

After receiving an undergraduate and medical degree at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Duma did her pediatric residency at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati. She has been part of the Child Abuse Team since March 1999.

Dr. Duma's role on the team includes participating in weekly meetings, seeing patients in the Emergency Department as well as inpatient and outpatient units, and participating in weekly team meetings.

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Erna Olafson, PhD, PsyDis director of the Program on Child Abuse Forensic and Treatment Training within the Childhood Trust, director of training for the Trauma Treatment Training Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and director of the Forensic Training Institute.

Dr. Olafson is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. As Training Director of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Trauma Treatment Training Center, Dr. Olafson trains mental health professionals in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Childhood Traumatic Grief, and Psychological First Aid and provides ongoing consultation to community providers in several states in order to ensure protocol fidelity. 

The Child Forensic Interviewing Institute directed by Dr. Olafson has trained over 1000 police officers, CAC interviewers, and social work investigators, including those at Cincinnati Children's Hospital's Child Advocacy Center, Hamilton County JFS, elsewhere in Ohio, and in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington DC, West Virginia, Wyoming, Guam, Belize, Jordan, and Canada.  

Dr. Olafson's research and presentations focus on childhood maltreatment and family violence. Dr. Olafson and co-author Dr. Barbara Boat received the Pro Humanitate Raskin Child Welfare Article Medal and Award from the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare in 2003 for "Long-Term Management of the Sexually Abused Child: Considerations and Challenges" in Treatment of Child Abuse. As part of a multi-disciplinary forensic team, Dr. Olafson has investigated and reviewed alleged sexual assault, child maltreatment, and family violence cases in over 20 states, federal jurisdictions and in Canada. Dr. Olafson's recent publications include such topics as children's memory and suggestibility, family violence, children's disclosure patterns in child sexual abuse cases, complex trauma in children and adolescents, as well as many others.

Dr. Olafson has served as co-chair of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network's Justice System Work Group since 2003. The NCTSN Justice group collaborated with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges to produce a special issue of the Juvenile and Family Court Journal in 2006 to offer evidence-based information to judges and other justice system professionals about the impact of trauma on children and evidence-based intervention and treatment approaches. Dr. Olafson is on the Advisory Board for the American Prosecutor's Research Institute Half a Nation Finding Words training program on investigative interviewing of children and serves as a trainer for Beyond Finding Words, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Forensic Trainings, and the Ohio Child Welfare Regional Training program. She was Editor-in-Chief of the APSAC Advisor from 2002 to 2004.

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Erica S. Pearl, PsyD, received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH. In September 2004, she joined the Trauma Treatment Replication Center, a joint collaborative of the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children and the Childhood Trust, to provide training and consultation to community providers in the area of evidence-based treatments for traumatized children and families. She trains community providers in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE), a program for non-clinical providers who interact with traumatized children.

Following his training in adult psychiatry at Yale University, Frank W. Putnam, MD, joined the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD, studying biological rhythms and neuroendocrine systems in rapid cycling bipolar patients. There he encountered a large number of psychiatric patients who reported histories of child maltreatment.

Dr. Putnam began working with patients who suffered from trauma-related disorders, pioneering studies of brain electrical activity mapping and other techniques in this area. Working with adult victims of child abuse, Dr. Putnam became convinced that research with abused children was critical to understanding and reversing the negative psychological and biological effects of maltreatment.

In 1986, Dr. Putnam started a longitudinal research study of sexually abused girls with Penelope Trickett, PhD, a developmental psychologist at the University of Southern California. This study continues under the direction of Jennie Noll, PhD, and has produced a great deal of new information about the long-term effects of maltreatment on child development.

Convinced many of the lessons learned in this research can be applied to treatment of child abuse, Dr. Putnam left the NIMH to head the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and to be director of the Trauma Treatment Replication Center, specializing in the transfer of evidence-based practices to community mental health providers.

The mission of the Center for Safe and Healthy Children is to develop a national child abuse prevention, evaluation and treatment center that develops and disseminates evidence-based interventions for the many negative effects of child abuse and neglect.

Dr. Putnam is on the advisory board for the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement.

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Continuum of Trauma Care. Principal Investigator. 2009 - 2012.