CT4A Spotlight: Child Thriving Communities

Jill D. McLeigh, PhD is director of Policy, Advocacy, and Research at the Rees-Jones Center for Foster Care Excellence, Children’s Health in Dallas, and assistant adjoint professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, CO. She is a past president of the Global Alliance and a former co-editor of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. She currently is the co-editor of the International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice. Her primary research interest has been in preventive measures and interventions that seek to strengthen communities’ capacity for family support, participation, and mutual assistance. This interest includes understanding how services to families should be designed and delivered, so as to promote child safety and well-being.

Oscar A. Barbarin, PhD, is professor of African American Studies and professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a past president of the Global Alliance and a former co-editor of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Dr. Barbarin’s research aims to illiminate biopsychosocial influences on children’s development especially externalizing problems in boys of color. He has organized a group of nationally prominent researchers to complete longitudinal analyses of data on the social, academic and emotionsl development of boys of color. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Contributions to Understanding International, Cultural and Contextual Diversity in Child Development from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD).

James Garbarino, PhD, is emeritus professor of Psychology at Cornell University and at Loyola University Chicago. From 2006-2020, he held the Maude C. Clarke Chair in Humanistic Psychology and was founding Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago. His research focuses on issues in the social ecology of child and adolescent development. He has had a long-standing interest in a wide range of violence-related issues, including war, child maltreatment, childhood aggression, and juvenile delinquency. Dr. Garbarino has served as consultant or advisor to a wide range of organizations, including the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, the National Institute for Mental Health, the American Medical Association, the National Black Child Development Institute, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, and the FBI. Dr. Garbarino was the 2011 recipient of the Max Hayman Award for his work in educating both the general public and human service professionals about the nature of social toxicity and its meaning and consequences for children, adolescents, and their families.

Anne Scheer, PhD, is a children’s sociologist at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s Department of Population Science and Policy in Springfield, IL. She pursues individual and collaborative research to better understand children’s own views about health, well-being, the environments in which they live, learn, and play, and explores how communities, systems, and institutions can become more child friendly. Since 2020, Dr. Scheer has been leading efforts in Alton, IL, to transform the city into a UNICEF-recognized Child Friendly City. Dr. Scheer’s work around the Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) in Alton seeks to engage children, youth, their families, and communities in identifying priorities for action and solutions that are both locally feasible and sustainable on our path to creating a city in which all children are happy, healthy, and safe. Further supporting this work, Dr. Scheer also leads a local coalition of 14 stakeholder organizations working to improve health equity, collaborates with local law enforcement to address high rates of youth violence, and explores innovative, low-barrier, community-based responses to the current crisis in children’s and youth mental health.