Project Director:

Dr. Fran H. Norris received a Ph.D. in Community/Social Psychology from the University of Louisville and is a Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, a Research Associate of the Executive Division of the Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD, and a consortium member of the new National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (NC-START) at the University of Maryland. She has published over 100 articles and chapters and has been the recipient of a number of grants for research, research education, and professional development from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Her interests include the epidemiology of posttraumatic stress, cross-cultural studies, the mobilization and deterioration of social support after disasters, and systems issues in providing disaster mental health services. Her disaster studies have focused on such events as floods in Appalachia, Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew in the United States, and Hurricane Paulina and the 1999 floods and mudslides in Mexico. She was also the lead investigator on two case studies that examined lessons learned from mental health systems’ responses to the Oklahoma City bombing and the World Trade Center Disaster. She is the Deputy/Statistical Editor of the Journal of Traumatic Stress and the Scientific Editor of the PTSD Research Quarterly.

Website Director:

Dr. Jessica L. Hamblen received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2000. She is presently the Deputy for Education at the National Center for PTSD and Assistant Professor in the department of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Hamblen has specialized skills in website design, including development of content and organization. She is the webmaster for the National Center for PTSD website.

Specific to disaster, she works on a team of investigators on a project to study the mental health systems' responses to the Oklahoma City Bombing and World Trade Center attack. The project is being conducted as part of an interagency agreement between NCPTSD and CMHS. In addition, she has been an ongoing consultant to the Office of Mental Health in New York and has helped them develop materials on the effects of 9/11 and a brief intervention targeting stress symptoms following disaster. Dr. Hamblen will be the webmaster for the Research Education in Disaster Mental Health website, will collaborate with faculty in developing written educational materials, and will help create materials for the workshops.

DVD Producers and Directors:

Dr. Patricia J. Watson received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Catholic University in 1994, and completed a fellowship in Pediatric Psychology at Harvard Medical School in 1995. She is presently a Senior Education Specialist at the National Center for PTSD and Assistant Professor in the department of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. She has published three articles on early interventions for PTSD, and is currently co-editing a book on interventions for trauma following disasters and mass violence.

Dr. Watson has specialized skill in training, translation of science into practice, developing educational products, consultation, evaluation of educational efforts, and development of website and CD-ROM educational products. Specific to disaster, she coordinated and/or developed all disaster-related products placed on the NCPTSD website following 9/11, and has been the project manager for all projects related to NCPTSD's collaboration with CMHS, including developing research reviews, focus groups, program guidance documents, and training products. She was part of the team of investigators who are studying the mental health systems' responses to the Oklahoma City Bombing and World Trade Center attack. For the project, Dr. Watson will play the lead role in facilitating the project's science to practice goals, will collaborate with faculty in developing written educational materials, and will create materials for and co-teach the workshops.

Dr. James Carter received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Mississippi in 1997and is currently a Research Psychologist at the Center for Clinical Computing at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Instructor in Psychiatry and Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is a multimedia developer and video producer, as well as a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in behavioral medicine. Dr. Carter specializes in developing media and computer-based training programs and translating empirically supported behavioral interventions into computer-delivered formats. In addition to the DVD introducing new researchers to the field of disaster mental health, he is PI on a project to develop interactive media-based mental health programs for use on the International Space Station, and previously produced a self-instructional video to teach clinical interviewing skills. Dr. Carter has also co-developed programs on HIV prevention counseling and cancer patient education.

Curriculum Director:

Dr. Krys Kaniasty received a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Louisville in 1991 and is presently a Professor of Psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Drs. Kaniasty and Norris have collaborated since the late 1980's on disaster mental health research, beginning with their prospective study of older adults exposed to floods in southeastern Kentucky and continuing through their longitudinal studies of Hurricanes Hugo, Andrew, and Paulina. Dr. Kaniasty was principal investigator of a three-wave study of the devastating 1997 floods in Poland, his country of birth. He is perhaps the foremost authority on postdisaster social support in the world, having authored or co-authored numerous empirical articles and chapters on the topic.

Dr. Kaniasty has taught courses in statistics and research methodology at the undergraduate and doctoral level for many years. He would contribute to educational materials is in the areas of theory and methods and he would best serve as a mentor to an investigator with interests in social resources or community functioning after disasters. Dr. Kaniasty will chair the initiative regarding the development of an interdisciplinary graduate/professional seminar.

Special Advisor to the Directors:

Dr. Matthew J. Friedman received a PhD in Pharmacology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1967 and an MD from the University of Kentucky in 1969. He is Executive Director of the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Professor of Psychiatry and of Pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School. He has worked with PTSD patients as a clinician and researcher for thirty years and has published extensively on stress and PTSD, biological psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and clinical outcome studies on depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and chemical dependency. He has written or co-edited fifteen books and monographs, 52 book chapters and 93 peer reviewed articles in scientific journals.

Listed in The Best Doctors in America, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, past-president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), Chair of the scientific advisory board of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America and has served on many VA and NIMH research, education and policy committees. He has received many honors including the ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.