Jeffrey P Winer Author

B. Heidi Ellis, PhD is Director of the Refugee Trauma and Resilience Center at Boston Children's Hospital, and Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on understanding trauma exposure, violence, and how the social context impacts developmental trajectories. For more than a decade she has built a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) program with Somali refugees. Through this program she has investigated the role of discrimination in refugee youth mental health, and developed and evaluated a school-based mental health intervention for Somali refugee youth.  Dr. Ellis is also the co-developer of Trauma Systems Therapy, a treatment model for traumatized children.

Saida M. Abdi, LICSW, MSW., MA is Associate Director of Community Relations, at Children's Hospital Boston's Refugee Trauma and Resilience Center.  She is a clinical social worker, and an expert in refugee trauma and resilience. She is currently a PhD candidate in Social Work and Sociology at Boston University. She is a native of Somalia and a former refugee herself. Ms. Abdi has worked for more than 20 years in the area of refugee youth and families, developing school-based programs to support adjustment of refugee youth in resettlement and community-based research and intervention.

Jeffrey P. Winer, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and Research Fellow at the Refugee Trauma and Resilience Center at Boston Children's Hospital. He provides outpatient treatment within a private psychotherapy practice in Lexington, MA. He also provides group treatment at the McLean Hospital 3East Adolescent DBT Partial Hospital Program.  Dr. Winer received his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Philosophy Integrated Studies from Grinnell College and his MS and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He completed his clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical school.