About Dr. Kaufman
Dr. Kaufman received her PhD at Yale University where she served on faculty in the Department of Psychiatry for 18 years. Her most recent positions were as a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and as the Director of Research at the Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress at a Hopkins affiliated hospital.
Throughout her career she has studied the impact of child abuse and neglect and other forms of adversity. Her research spans from neurobiology to social policy, and uses tools from psychology, genetics, and neuroscience to understand mechanisms of risk and resilience in vulnerable populations. She has provided child policy related testimony at the United Nations and the US Senate. She has also frequently provided expert testimony on behalf of youth involved with the child welfare system.
As first author on the KSADS child and adolescent psychiatric diagnostic interview, which has been translated into more than 30 languages and updated to a web-based computer-administered format, Dr. Kaufman has also provided training on child psychiatric diagnoses and served as a consultant on numerous federally funded and industry-sponsored pediatric psychiatric clinical trials. She has also worked as a therapist with children, adolescents and adults while at Yale and Johns Hopkins, and completed PTSD disability evaluations at the VA.
Dr. Kaufman left academic medicine in 2022 to further the growth and development of her web-based psychiatric diagnostic assessment company, KSADS-COMP, Inc., and to work providing consultation, evaluations, and expert testimony on custody and child and adult personal injury cases involving child maltreatment.
Selected Invited Talks, Panels, and Testimony:
01/22 Testimony, State of California, AB 3121 Taskforce to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans
09/19 Testimony, Current Policies Affecting Children at the Border, Homeland Security Committee, United States Capitol, Washington DC
06/19 Testimony, Right to Family for All Children: International Human Rights Law and Findings from Research Experience, United Nations, N.Y.
02/19 Understanding Child Abuse: From Neurobiology to Social Policy, Oral Presentation, Kings College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London
4/18 State of the Art of Toxic Stress and Factors Associated with Resilience and Recovery, Plenary Talk, American Academy of Pediatrics, Houston, TX
9/17 Child Abuse and Epigenetic Mechanisms of Disease Risk, Plenary Talk, Biological Psychiatry Congress, Capetown, South Africa
12/15 Diagnosis and Comorbidity of PTSD and Alcohol Use Disorders in Children and Adolescents, Invited Oral Presentation, Workgroup Meeting Sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), NIAAA State-of-the-Science on Treating the Comorbidity of Alcohol Use Disorders and PTSD, Fort Lauderdale, FL
5/13 Leveraging Neuroscience and Advances in the Biomedical Sciences to Inform Child Welfare, Plenary Session, Annual Meeting of the Welfare League of America, Washington
Dr. Joan Kaufman
Certified in forensic custody evaluations by New York State, Dr. Kaufman is a world renowned Psychologist providing consultations, evaluations, and expert testimony for child custody and child and adult trauma cases. She is a licensed clinical Psychologist in New York and Maryland, with pending licenses in the remaining 39 states covered by the PSYPACT legislation.