Children’s Hospital New Orleans welcomed Julie Kaplow, PhD, ABPP, an expert in childhood trauma and bereavement, who will serve as the executive director of the Trauma and Grief (TAG) Center at the hospital. Kaplow will oversee all activities of the TAG Center, including evidence-based assessment and treatment of traumatized and grieving children and adolescents.
“We are honored to have Dr. Kaplow join our team here in New Orleans,” said John R. Nickens IV, president and chief executive officer at Children’s Hospital New Orleans. “This center will be one of the only outpatient facilities in the state of Louisiana to focus explicitly on addressing trauma and grief in youth - a service our community desperately needs especially after the recent traumatic events that have affected our families and their children. I am excited to see how the TAG Center will start making a difference in our community right away.”
Kaplow is a licensed clinical psychologist and board-certified in clinical child and adolescent psychology. She founded the first TAG Center in 2012 while on faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School and established a second center in Texas in 2014. She has been published widely on the topics of childhood trauma and grief with more than 75 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.
“I am thrilled to join the team at Children’s Hospital to establish a new TAG Center in New Orleans, particularly given the number of traumas and losses that youth here are facing, including Hurricane Ida, the high rates of COVID-19 deaths and ongoing community violence,” said Kaplow. “Identifying and addressing trauma and grief as early as possible is crucial to helping kids lead healthy, happy lives and promoting resiliency over the longer term.”
“One of the unique features of the TAG Center is that we understand the important difference between trauma and bereavement, and we use evidence-based approaches to address each in the most effective way,” said Kaplow.
To ensure access to best practice trauma- and grief-informed mental health care, the TAG Center is focusing on community outreach initiatives, such as partnering with Children’s Hospital’s ThriveKids school-based wellness initiatives in Jefferson Parish Public Schools, and the High 5 Project, a program started by Children’s New Orleans that aims to ensure that all children with mental and behavioral disorders receive the care and support they need to thrive. “We know from our own research that the death of a loved one is the number one predictor of school problems, above and beyond any other form of trauma. So, helping schools to effectively identify “at-risk” youth and provide trauma- and grief-focused treatment is a critically important component of our community outreach,” said Kaplow.
Kaplow will maintain her role as executive director of the TAG Center at The Hackett Center for Mental Health in Houston. The two TAG Centers will partner in the development and dissemination of evidence-based treatments for youth exposed to trauma and bereavement.