Symposium Overview: TO BE PUBLISHED
Featured Speaker:
Lisa R. Fortuna, MD, MPH, MDiv, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. She is board certified in Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and is an addiction medicine physician. Dr. Fortuna is a nationally recognized researcher and educator whose work focuses on youth mental health, trauma, substance use, suicide prevention, and the development of effective and accessible approaches to prevention and care. Her research has examined how family, community, culture, migration, discrimination, adversity, and other social and structural conditions influence the mental health and development of children and adolescents. A major focus of her work is translating research into interventions that can reach young people where they live, learn, and receive care. She has led federally funded studies of youth mental health and substance use interventions and has worked extensively with schools, health systems, community organizations, youth, and families. Her research emphasizes community-engaged approaches in which young people and communities help shape the interventions and systems intended to serve them. Dr. Fortuna has held national leadership roles in child and adolescent psychiatry, prevention, research, and systems of care and has received national recognition for her contributions to prevention and child mental health. She is particularly interested in how belonging, relationships, identity, culture, and community can promote resilience and healthy development, as well as how exclusion, discrimination, trauma, and social adversity can affect young people across development. In addition to her work in medicine and public health, Dr. Fortuna holds a Master of Divinity degree and is an ordained Episcopal priest. This interdisciplinary background informs her broader interest in human dignity, meaning, belonging, and what she describes as developmental justice—the conditions children and young people need not only to remain safe and healthy, but to develop, connect, and flourish.
Symposium Agenda – TO BE PUBLISHED
