Elizabeth Burke Bryant is a Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy & Practice at Brown University School of Public Health, based at the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute. She is working to close disparities in maternal and child health, starting with family mental health, through policy and systems change. A child advocate with over 30 years of experience in advancing equitable policies and programs to improve the well-being of children, youth and families, she served as Executive Director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, a children’s policy and research organization, from its founding in 1994 to 2022. Under her leadership, Rhode Island KIDS COUNT became the state’s premier child advocacy organization with a national reputation for its work to improve the health, education, early childhood development, economic security and safety of Rhode Island’s children with a core focus on equity and closing disparities by race, ethnicity and income. During her tenure, Rhode Island KIDS COUNT helped to achieve a nationally recognized RI Pre-K program, full-day kindergarten, near universal children’s health insurance coverage, a significant reduction in childhood lead poisoning, and reversal of a law that required 17-year-olds to be tried as adults and sent to adult prison. Prior positions included Director of Policy and Housing Court Prosecutor for the City of Providence, and Advisor to the Women’s Prison Mentoring Program. She received her BA from the University of Vermont and law degree from George Washington University Law School. She served as Co-Chair of the Partnership for America’s Children, Policy Advisor for the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, and Co-Chair of the Rhode Island Early Learning Council. She was named USA TODAY’s 2023 Woman of the Year for Rhode Island.

In April 2015, Dr. Phyllis Dennery, Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Pediatrics, took the lead for pediatric care, teaching, and research at the Lifespan health system and Alpert Medical School. She serves as pediatrician-in‑chief and medical director at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, as well as chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Brown. Dr. Dennery’s research, consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health for 24 years, addresses lung problems and other medical conditions among newborns. She has served on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality (SACIM) and advocated for a Center for Health Disparities while serving at the University of Pennsylvania.

Emily Feinberg, ScD, CPNP is a faculty member at the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University and a professor in the Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at Brown University School of Public Health. Emily is trained clinically as a pediatric nurse practitioner and she continues to see patients at DotHouse Health, a federally qualified community health center in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. She has served as core faculty on Boston University’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau -funded Maternal Child Center of Excellence, mentoring MPH and DrPH students. The impetus for her research has come from the disturbing inequities in access to developmental and mental health services that she has witnessed among the children and families with whom she works. The overarching theme of her research has been the redesign of community-based child health systems.  She has applied this lens to a number of public health priorities, including maternal depression screening, management, and prevention; autism services; and the integration of child mental health services within pediatric primary care. She leads research that investigates models that engage lay health workers (family navigators, family partners, community health workers) to assure equitable delivery of early diagnostic services to young children with autism and access to behavioral health services more broadly and serves as co-director of Team Up for Children, a foundation-funded initiative to implementation integrated behavioral health care in a network of Massachusetts Federally Qualified Health Centers. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute for Nursing Research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the March of Dimes Foundation, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. 

Tracy Gladstone, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and a researcher at the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University. She is a clinical psychologist and has been trained in evidence-based prevention and intervention protocols. For the past twenty-five years, Tracy has focused her research on the prevention of depression in adolescents and families at risk. She has conducted several depression prevention trials, including an effort to evaluate a group cognitive-behavioral intervention for adolescents at risk for depression; a pilot study to develop, implement and evaluate a depression prevention program for women recovering from fistula repair surgery in Ethiopia; and multiple efforts to develop, evaluate and refine the technology-based Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training (CATCH-IT) intervention. Currently she is leading an effort to adapt the CATCH-IT intervention for college students with symptoms of depression, and she is working with a team to develop strategies for preventing depression in adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In addition to her research investigating interventions to prevent depression in adolescents, over the past several years Tracy has been working with local school districts to develop and implement a community-based depression/anxiety/suicide screening and prevention program for middle and high school students. Tracy’s work is funded by federal agencies, including the National Institute of Mental Health and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and by a range of foundations, local agencies, and school districts.

Dr. Caroline Kistin is a pediatrician and health services researcher. Her work to date has been funded by grants from NIH, PCORI, CDC, and the USDA. Many of her primary studies have focused on family mental health and the prevention of child maltreatment specifically, and more broadly on developing and testing family-focused and community-delivered interventions to improve both parent and child outcomes. Dr. Kistin has previously served as the Primary Investigator and Program Director for a T32-funded fellowship program through AHRQ, where she trained and mentored doctoral students and post-doctoral trainees in health services research, with a focus on health care quality, delivery, and health outcomes specific to low-income populations. 

Stephen Sheinkopf, PhD, is a clinical and developmental psychologist with a specialty in autism and developmental disabilities.  Dr. Sheinkopf is a graduate of Tufts University and completed his doctoral training at University of Miami under the mentorship of Peter Mundy, PhD.  Dr. Sheinkopf works as both a clinician and a researcher with a focus on the early development of children with autism, including infant signs of risk and the development of language and social behaviors in children with autism. Dr. Sheinkopf’s clinical service is focused on the early diagnosis and clinical management of autism. Dr. Sheinkopf is co-director of the Rhode Island Consortium for Autism Research and Treatment (RI-CART). 

Dr. Silverstein is the director of the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute and a George Hazard Crocker University Professor of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at Brown University. Prior to joining Brown University in the Fall of 2021, Dr. Silverstein was associate professor of pediatrics, director of the Division of General Academic Pediatrics, and vice chair of research for the Department of Pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine. He also worked as a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, New England’s largest safety net hospital. Since 2016, he has served as a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Dr. Silverstein’s research focuses on mental health services for children and families. His primary interest is the prevention of depression in at-risk mothers and mothers of vulnerable children.

Dr. Tuuli is the Chace-Joukowsky Professor and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Women & Infants Hospital. A board certified Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician, his research is focused on the prediction and prevention of adverse obstetric outcomes. He employs large cohort studies, randomized clinical trials and meta-analysis to generate evidence for managing obstetric problems including preventing of surgical site infection after cesarean delivery, management of labor, and optimizing management of medical complications in pregnancy. He currently leads two NIH funded multicenter trials on intravenous versus oral iron for treatment of anemia in pregnancy in the U.S. and use of a novel intrauterine negative pressure device for the management of postpartum hemorrhage in Ghana. His has 215 publications in high impact journals including the NEJM, JAMA and JAMA Pediatrics. Dr. Tuuli earned his Medical Degree from the University of Ghana Medical School in 2001. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, earning a Master of Public Health degree in 2003 with concentration in maternal and child health. He completed residency training in Obstetrics & Gynecology at Emory University in 2008, and fellowship training in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Washington University in 2011. Dr. Tuuli completed the Business of Medicine Physician MBA program at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in 2020.