Robert Pynoos, MD, MPH

Robert S. Pynoos, M.D., M.P.H., is Professor of Psychiatry in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. He is Co-Director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, Director of the UCLA Trauma Psychiatry Service and Executive Director of the UCLA Anxiety Disorders Section. Dr. Pynoos is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Schools of Physicians & Surgeons and Public Health.

Over the past two decades, he has made significant contributions to understanding the impact of children's exposure to violence and disaster, and to elevating the standards of mental health care for child victims and witnesses. He has written extensively on child development and child traumatic stress, the neurobiology of child and adolescent trauma, and public mental health approaches for children and families after disaster, war and community violence. He has edited several widely respected books on posttraumatic stress in children and adolescents. He is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the 2001 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dr. Pynoos has served as Chair for the William T. Grant Consortium on Adolescent Bereavement and for the MacArthur Foundation Network Study Group on Children's Responses to Traumatic Stress. He served as a consultant to the United States Department of Education after the Oklahoma City bombing, to the Springfield Oregon Public School District after the Thurston High School shooting, to Jefferson County Mental Health after the Columbine High School tragedy and to Santana High School, Santee, California. He has been a consultant to UNICEF for Kuwait after the Gulf War, has a long-standing collaborative relationship with UNICEF to conduct a long-term post-war recovery program for adolescents in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and worked for years with the Armenian Relief Society in their decade-long post-earthquake recovery efforts. Dr. Pynoos was an invited participant to the 1999 White House Strategy Session on Children, Violence and Responsibility. He has received the American Psychiatric Association Bruno Lima Award for excellence in disaster psychiatry.

Dr. Pynoos has extensive experience in work with the Institute of Medicine, serving from 1994-1997 on the Committee on Evaluation of the Department of Defense Persian Gulf Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Protocol. He has also served as an Institute of Medicine reviewer to the work of other committees, including the IOM Chemical and Biological Terrorism R & D Needs to Improve Civilian Medical Response. In November 2001, he was also an invited speaker to the IOM Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention to review critical issues in public mental health planning for readiness, response and recovery to catastrophic acts of terrorism. In response to September 11, he has served as a consultant to the New York State Office of Mental Health and to the New York City Department of Health, as well providing assistance to the New York City Board of Education and U.S. Department of Education outreach to the private school community. Through recommendation of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Pynoos provided consultation to the First Lady, Laura Bush, in regard to publicly addressing children and families in the aftermath of September 11.