Staff, Consultants & Advisors

AcostaPrice 

oaprice@gwu.edu

 Olga Acosta Price, PhD, is director of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools and associate professor at the School of Public Health and Health Services, at the George Washington University. Her faculty appointment is in the Department of Prevention and Community Health. She comes to the Center with experience in managing school-based mental health programs in Washington, D.C. where she was Director of the School Mental Health Program at the D.C. Department of Mental Health, an award-winning community-based program. Dr. Acosta Price managed the development, implementation, and evaluation of this program in 30 public schools for over five years. Before coming to Washington, Dr. Acosta Price was associate director at the Center for School Mental Health Assistance and assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. She has presented at local and national meetings on school-based mental health, program evaluation, and violence prevention and has written several articles and book chapters on these topics. Dr. Acosta Price graduated from Vassar College and received her master’s degree and doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

 

jgl@gwu.edu

Julia Graham Lear, PhD, is senior advisor and founder of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools sponsored by The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development. For 20 years she has worked to develop school-based health programs and services as a means of promoting the well-being of children and adolescents. During this period she has worked with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, directing a number of grant programs focused on improving health service delivery. for children and teens. Dr. Lear serves as Interim Chair for the Department of Prevention and Community Health in the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. She teaches courses at the university, writes and speaks frequently on the organization of health care for children and adolescents, and serves on advisory boards of a number of organizations dedicated to improving child health. She graduated from Brown University and received her master's degree and doctorate from Tufts University.


  Donna Behrens, RN, MPH, BSN

dbehrens@gwu.edu

Donna Behrens, RN, MPH, BSN, is the associate director of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools.  Prior to coming to the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, Ms. Behrens held the position of Executive Director of the Maryland Assembly on School-Based Health Care. The Maryland Assembly on School-Based Health Care is an advocacy organization devoted to increasing access to health care for children in Maryland and nationally through school based health centers. Prior to that, she served as Director of Health Policy and Director of the School-Based Health Center Initiative in the Maryland Governor’s Office for Children, Youth and Families. In these two positions she used her extensive background in nursing, children’s health, mental health, policy and program development to help develop stronger systems to prevent teen pregnancy, expand children’s mental health services, reduce infant mortality, and increase access to school mental health programs.  Ms. Behrens received Associate and Bachelor’s degrees in nursing from Prince George’s County Community College and Catholic University of America respectively and a Masters Degree in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.


Theresa Chapman 

chapman@gwu.edu

 Theresa Chapman, is the manager of operations and finance for the Center where she oversees the administration of grants and marketing activities. Ms. Chapman draws upon her 20 years of management experience to maintain and oversee the Center’s multi-grant operating budgets and is responsible for assuring compliance with the requirements of the university and the Center’s sponsors. Additionally, she coordinates Center meetings, maintains office systems, and negotiates relationships with university support services. With ten years experience working with health care research and policy organizations, she develops and designs promotional web and print material for the field. Ms. Chapman coordinates Center exhibits that promote the Center’s mission on children’s health at school in major national meetings around the country. 

   Evelyn Frankford, M.S.W., has more than 30 years of experience in inter-agency work to integrate the public education, mental health, health, and human services systems to overcome the fragmentation of our current youth-serving interventions so that youth can achieve better life outcomes. She specializes in policy analysis that builds on research and best practices and in then translating that policy work into effective action plans that engage diverse stakeholders. Ms. Frankford completed The State of School-Based Mental Health Programs in Massachusetts: An Initial Inventory and Analysis for a foundation that wishes to be anonymous (December 2009). As a Visiting Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Boston’s Center for Social Policy, Ms. Frankford staffed an Interdisciplinary Working Group on Child and Youth Well-Being and recently completed an evaluation of professional development in adult education for the state education agency. She represents the Center for Social Policy on the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Task Force on Behavioral Health Care. The Task Force recently completed and the Commissioner of Education sent to the Legislature The Final Report of the Massachusetts Behavioral Health and Public Schools Task Force, describing a comprehensive framework for implementing school-based behavioral health in schools and local districts. Ms. Frankford's other projects encompass working with the State Department of Mental Health on Transition Age Youth policy and programming.

Prior to starting her consulting practice (frankfordconsulting.com), Ms. Frankford served as Director of the EOHHS Schools Initiative(Executive Office of Health and Human Services), working for Commissioner Harry Spence. The Initiative worked with selected urban school districts to build a strategic plan to integrate schools-mental health-human services supports for student learning and healthy child development. She has implemented national school health and mental health technical assistance projects funded by SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) and CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) at Education Development Center.
 

Catherine Solomon, is the Program Assistant at the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools. She studied at Penn State University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Advertising with a minor in Sociology. After completing college, she interned at various non-profit organizations with services ranging from sports programs for children with autism to supporting development and relief projects in Africa. Ms. Solomon contributes to the Weekly Insider and provides communications and administrative support for the Center.



          
 

Kevin Koenig, is a graduate research assistant at The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools where he supports Center staff and assists the Program Assistant. He studied at Saint John’s University in Minnesota, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Psychology. After college, he joined AmeriCorps, assisting disaster-affected areas with recovery and volunteer management. Prior to moving to Washington D.C., he worked for over two years as an Independent Living Specialist at Paraquad, a Center for Independent Living in St. Louis, providing case-management and advocacy services to individuals with disabilities. Mr. Koenig is currently a student at The George Washington University in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, pursuing a Masters of Public Policy with a concentration in Analytic Techniques.

                                 
 

 Lauren Rabinovitz is a graduate research assistant at The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools where she provides supportive services to Center staff. Ms. Rabinovitz is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with specialized training in Early Childhood Mental Health. She studied Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park and Clinical Social Work at the University of Maryland School of Social Work in Baltimore. Post graduation, Ms. Rabinovitz worked as a Clinical Case Manager in the District of Columbia Foster Care System for one year. She worked for the last 3 years as a Mental Health Consultant at the University of Maryland School of Medicine: Center for Infant Study providing expertise to families and program staff regarding children’s mental health. Ms. Rabinovitz is currently a student at The George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, pursuing a Masters of Public Health in the Maternal and Child Health program.