Child Behavioral Health in Sub-Saharan Africa

Fred M. Ssewamala, PhD is William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Ssewamala leads innovative, interdisciplinary research that informs, develops and tests economic empowerment and social protection interventions aimed at improving life chances and long-term developmental impacts for children and adolescent youth impacted by poverty and health disparities in low-resource communities. He holds a joint appointment in the Washington University School of Medicine, and directs the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD) and SMART Africa Center.

Currently, Dr. Ssewamala is conducting five large-scale longitudinal randomized control trials across sub-Saharan Africa funded by the National Institutes of Health: Kyaterekera Project, Suubi+Adherence-R2, Suubi4Her, SMART Africa and Suubi4Stigma. Another project, Suubi4Cancer, explores care for children living with HIV with suspected cancers. In addition, he is a co-principal investigator on several NIH-funded training projects that focus on training early-career researchers committed to careers in child behavioral health.

Dr. Ssewamala has over 100 peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals on family economic empowerment and related health and mental health outcomes as well as HIV prevention. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Adolescent Health and co-edits the Global Social Welfare journal. He is a member of the Society for Social Work and Research, American Public Health Association, and the Siteman Cancer Center. Ssewamala is also a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

Ozge Sensoy Bahar, PhD is Research Assistant Professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Sensoy Bahar's research focuses on child and family well-being in global contexts characterized by poverty and associated stressors. Her current research program focuses on youth experiences of child work and labor, as well as the individual, family, and contextual factors leading to child labor in two country contexts, Turkey and Ghana. Dr. Sensoy Bahar has led two research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health focused on the unaccompanied migration of adolescent girls for labor in Ghana. The goal of her work is to develop culturally and contextually relevant interventions to reduce risk factors associated with child labor. As a qualitative methodology expert, she also leads the qualitative components of multiple NIH-funded studies.

Sensoy Bahar completed a three-year, externally funded post-doctoral fellowship at the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University Silver School of Social Work. Currently, she serves as one of the co-directors for the International Center for Child Health and Development at the Brown School. She also serves on the editorial board of the Global Social Welfare journal.

Mary M. McKay, PhD is Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Dean McKay joined the Brown School as dean in 2016. Dean McKay's academic experience connects deeply to both social work and public health. She has received substantial federal funding for research focused on meeting the mental health and health prevention needs of youth and families impacted by poverty both in the US and globally, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa. She also has significant expertise in child mental health services and implementation research methods, as well as over 20 years of experience conducting HIV prevention and care-oriented studies, supported by the National Institutes of Health.

She has authored more than 150 publications on mental and behavioral health, HIV/AIDS prevention and urban poverty, and more.

Prior to joining the Brown School, Dean McKay was the McSilver Professor of Social Work and the inaugural director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University's Silver School of Social Work. She previously served as the head of the Division of Mental Health Services Research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Her prior academic appointments include Columbia University and University of Illinois at Chicago.