Public health researchers at Georgia State University are available to discuss how natural disasters and other traumas affect children.

Betty Lai is an assistant professor of public health and is available directly at [email protected]. Her research focuses on how children and families respond to disasters and other traumatic stressors, including children’s mental health symptoms, physical health symptoms, and school functioning following large scale disasters, such as Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, Charley, and bushfires in Australia.

She and her colleagues are using a National Science Foundation grant to study how schools can become more resilient in the face of disasters, and are focusing on how schools in Texas recovered after Hurricane Ike. Lai has also received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study children’s responses to disasters. 

More information about Lai is available at http://publichealth.gsu.edu/profile/betty-lai/.

Her direct mobile contact is available in the contact box on this page for logged-in registrants of the Newswise system, or through public relations coordinator Jeremy Craig at 404-413-1374 or [email protected].

 

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Shanta R. Dube is an associate professor of public health and is available directly at [email protected]. Her research focuses on models to better promote wellbeing among adult survivors of childhood trauma and other disparate populations.  She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and reports, some of which were recognized and awarded by CDC for scientific excellence. She is currently Associate Editor for Child Abuse & Neglect

Dube started her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999, where she was awarded the Association for Teachers of Preventive Medicine Fellowship to be an investigator on a large-scale epidemiological study that assessed the impact of childhood traumatic stress on adult health outcomes. She is recognized both nationally and internationally for her research on the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, which focused on early life stress and substance use and abuse, and mental illness in adulthood.

 

More information about Dube is available at http://publichealth.gsu.edu/profile/shanta-dube/.

Her direct mobile contact is available in the contact box on this page for logged-in registrants of the Newswise system, or through public relations coordinator Jeremy Craig at 404-413-1374 or [email protected].

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