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.

Barbara Walling Boat, PhD, 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 her BA in psychology and Spanish at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota, her MA in child behavior and development at the University of Iowa, and her PhD 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 investigations and 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 Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. She has been at Cincinnati Children's 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 Cincinnati Children's. 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.

Erica Pearl Messer, 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.

Erna Olafson, PhD, PsyD, is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry and pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center within the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

She is currently the co-director of a National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Level II Site, the Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice, with joint SAMHSA funding until 2016 to the University of Connecticut and Cincinnati Children's.

Dr. Olafson was the training director for the Cincinnati Children's NCTSN site, the Trauma Treatment Training Center, from 2002 to 2012. She directed the Childhood Trust Child Forensic Training Institute, which graduated more than 1,000 law enforcement and advocacy center investigators, from 1999 to 2011.

Since 2003, she has chaired the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s Justice Consortium, which collaborated with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges to produce special trauma-focused issues of the Juvenile and Family Court Journal.

Dr. Olafson is one of 50 national trainers for Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the treatment approach that has the strongest evidence base for traumatized children and their caregivers. She received the Outstanding Professional Award from the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children in June, 2013. Her research, presentations, and publications focus on prevention, assessment, and treatment of family violence and child maltreatment.