NCDP Perspectives

Project Overview At the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, we have an extensive history of developing and applying research to meet the unique needs of children in disasters. Although our focus has mostly been domestic, we have been involved in many international disasters and crises. Last summer our director, Dr. Irwin Redlener, traveled to Greece on a fact finding trip to the Syrian refugee camps to see the plight of children caught in this crisis. What he found is what we have all come to know from the media, the research, and our peers involved in this response; we are losing a generation of children whose lives have been disrupted by war, migration and uncertainty. In May of 2018, Islamic Relief USA funded NCDP to develop a mobile application to assist caregivers in identifying and preventing early mental health issues among Syrian refugee children. This project leverages our long history of developing evidence-based programs to meet the needs of children affected by disasters, and

This post was originally published on June 28, 2018 in the Daily Beast. The bandwagon of child care and health professionals who have characterized the federal government’s forced separation of migrant children from their parents as “child abuse by government” is overflowing. It would indeed be difficult to concoct a more traumatizing experience for already vulnerable infants and children then what these kids have gone through. The fact is that, as a pediatrician, if I saw a child being subject to the

This post was originally published on March 7, 2018 in the Washington Post. In many ways my trip last month to Flint, Mich. — now the symbolic epicenter of how bad decisions, bad politics