Promoting Positive Adaptation in Youth Exposed to Disasters: The Harvey Resiliency and Recovery Program

Julie Kaplow, PhD, ABPP, is a licensed clinical psychologist and board certified in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. She holds a primary appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and an adjunct appointment in the Department of Palliative Care at MD Anderson Cancer Center. 

Dr. Kaplow also serves as Director of the Trauma and Grief Center at Texas Children's Hospital, a designated Treatment and Service Adaptation Center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network specializing in child and adolescent trauma and bereavement. In this role, she oversees evidence-based assessment, treatment, and research with traumatized and bereaved youth and families, and develops and disseminates trauma- and bereavement-informed "best practices" to community providers nationwide.

With support from the Children's Health Fund and the JPB Foundation, Dr. Kaplow recently established the Harvey Resiliency and Recovery Program, housed within the Trauma and Grief Center, to provide evidence-based risk screening and interventions to children and families adversely affected by Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath. A strong proponent of a scientist-practitioner approach, Dr. Kaplow's primary research interests focus on the biological, behavioral, and psychological consequences of childhood trauma and bereavement, with an emphasis on therapeutically modifiable factors that can be used to inform psychosocial interventions.

Dr. Kaplow has published widely on the topics of childhood trauma and bereavement including invited articles and editorials focusing on age-specific manifestations of grief (Kaplow, Layne, Pynoos et al., 2012), grief- and trauma-related methodological issues (Kaplow, Layne, & Pynoos, 2014), and developmental models of bereavement-related risk and resilience (Kaplow & Layne, 2014). 

Dr. Kaplow is lead author of the award-winning children's book, Samantha Jane's Missing Smile: A Story About Coping with the Loss of a Parent (Kaplow & Pincus, 2007), co-author of Collaborative Treatment of Traumatized Children and Teens: The Trauma Systems Therapy Approach (Saxe, Ellis, & Kaplow, 2007), and co-author of Trauma and Grief Component Therapy for Adolescents (Saltzman, Layne, Pynoos, Olafson, Kaplow, & Boat, in press).

She has also served as a consultant to the DSM-5 Sub-Work Group on Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder as well as the ICD-11 Work Group on Disorders Associated with Stress (PTSD and Prolonged Grief).