The Center for the Study of Violence Against Children (CSVAC)

Ginny Sprang, Ph.D., Director

Dr. Sprang is the Buckhorn Professor of Child Welfare and Children’s Mental Health at the University of Kentucky. She is an Associate Professor, with a joint appointment in the College of Social Work, and the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Sprang received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1991 and served as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Science Center, Irving Harris Program in Child Development and Infant Mental Health during her sabbatical in 2003-2004. Dr. Sprang is considered a national expert on child trauma and children’s mental health. Dr. Sprang has been recognized as leader in terms of organizing, designing and executing multi-site, statewide collaborations. She currently serves as Chair of the University of Kentucky’s Community Engagement committee and acts as an advisor to the University Committee on Academic Planning an Priorities on matters related to community engagement and the role and responsibility of the University in public and civic life.

Dr. Sprang also is also the Principal Investigator and Co/Director Comprehensive Assessment and Training Services (CATS) project, a statewide, translational research center that focuses on testing and refining best practices technologies in a “living laboratory” setting, then disseminating these practices to service providers in an effort to build community capacity to identify, assess and treat traumatized children and their families. Additionally, Dr. Sprang has served as Principal Investigator of the HRSA funded Behavioral Health Disaster Response Project since 2003. This project is a statewide collaboration between the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville and the state’s Department of Public Health that serves the entire Commonwealth. Additionally, Dr. Sprang serves as a Faculty Associate in the Center for Research on Violence Against Women and has served as a Commissioner on the President’s Commission on Women since 2006. These projects include service and research activities that address the deleterious effects of violence against children and serve as models of effective and collaborative university-community engagement.

James Clark, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., Associate Director

Dr. Clark is Associate Dean for Research in the UK College of Social Work and an associate professor in the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. He is co-director of the UK CATS Clinic which is a nationally-recognized program for the assessment and treatment of maltreated children. In 1980, he graduated from Siena College, a Catholic liberal arts school located in Albany, NY. He worked as a social work volunteer in rural W.V., in 1981, and then continued his studies at UK, graduating with a Master of Social Work in 1983. After a year of working in outreach clinic for Catholic Community Services in Doddridge County, WV, he returned to Lexington, KY as a clinician and director of Catholic Social Services Bureau from 1984-89. He then attended the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and completed a dissertation which analyzed the treatment and criminal careers of prisoners with schizophrenic disorders, earning the Ph.D. in 1995. He returned to Kentucky and joined the faculty of the UK College of Social Work. He teaches in the doctoral program and directs dissertations. In addition to his research in child maltreatment and substance misuse treatment, he has published in the areas of professional and research ethics, forensic mental health, and consumer satisfaction research. Dr. Clark is also interested in the development of translation approaches in social work research, with special emphasis on problems in forensics and community child mental health. He currently holds the Constance Wilson Professorship of Mental Health.

Allen Brenzel, M.D., Associate Director

Dr. Brenzel is also Director of the University of Kentucky Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division. Dr. Brenzel has served as a statewide consultant to the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Resources (CHFS). In that role he has contributed to public policy development with particular expertise in Child Welfare and Child victimization issues. He has developed multiple training curriculums including a recent statewide training on Child Fatality Prevention. He frequently lectures on child mental health topics to medical and mental health professionals as well as child welfare staff. For the past several years he has lectured on the mental health implications of Bioterror events with emphasis on recognition and differential diagnosis of mental status changes.

Otto Kaak, M.D., Associate Director

Dr. Kaak is a Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Social Work at the University of Kentucky. He is the training director of the Triple Board Residency Program, a capacity he has filled since 1986 when the program was instituted as a pilot, and he is a founding member of the Kentucky Attachment Project, which educates, advocates and provides training for professionals working with children with attachment disorders.

Carlton Craig, Ph.D., is a faculty associate of the Center for the Study of Violence Against Children. Dr. Craig is an Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work. He is currently Co-PI on a research project that, in collaboration with the Kentucky Refugee Ministries, is evaluating the mental health of Bosnian refugees five years after resettlement in the U.S. He was a data analyst on several research teams at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), including the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being study. Dr. Craig was a clinician at the Detroit Veterans Administration Medical Center (VMAC) where he authored a number of manualized protocols for the Advanced Directive Clinic, Incentive Therapy Program, and Day Treatment program.

Michele Staton-Tindall, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a faculty associate of the Center for the Study of Violence Against Children . She is an Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work and also serves as a faculty associate with the UK Center on Drug and Alcohol Research. Dr. Staton-Tindall has collaborated with CSVAC researchers on the Drug Endangered Child study, a pilot project to investigate the consequences of caregiver substance use and related criminal justice involvement on children and families. She is the chair of the CSVAC Research Workgroup and is working with the team to develop new Center initiatives, grants, and seminal publications. Dr. Staton-Tindall is currently the Principal Investigator for a SAMHSA funded CSAT TCE evaluation project focused on enhancing substance abuse services for women who are pregnant, parenting, or post-partum and their children. She is also the PI on the Criminal Justice Kentucky Substance Abuse Treatment Outcome Study (CJKTOS). Her research interests include substance use, criminal justice treatment, and the impact of substance abuse on children and families.

W. John Curtis, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology. Dr. Curtis is a Faculty Associate of the Center for the Study of Violence Against Children and an expert in developmental psychology. Dr. Curtis has a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Curtis’ research program integrates neuroscience and developmental perspectives to address how social experiences manifest themselves in brain development and functioning in children at-risk.