Yale Child Study Center Director Appoints New Chief of Child Psychiatry

Alan Kazdin, director of the Yale Child Study Center, has appointed Joseph L. Woolston, M.D., Chief of Child Psychiatry at the Child Study Center and at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Woolston is professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine, medical director of Child Psychiatric Services at Yale-New Haven Hospital, medical director of the Yale Intensive In-home Child and Adolescent Services (YICAPS) at the Child Study Center, and medical director of HUSKY Behavioral Plus.

“Dr. Woolston will thrive in his new role and I am excited to be working with him,” said Kazdin.

Woolston founded the Children’s Psychiatric In-patient Service at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1985. This service has been an international model for evaluation of seriously disturbed children and their families, for the training of mental health professionals, and for research on severe childhood psychopathology and innovative service delivery models. Woolston founded YICAPS in 1996. The program provides a wrap-around service approach to a medical model. In 1998 he helped develop the behavioral health supplement to Connecticut’s implementation of HUSKY, the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program. He helped create a state-funded managed care program that delivers supplemental behavioral health services to underinsured children based on the YICAPS model.

Woolston has been an active advocate for improving the delivery of mental health services at the state policy level. Since 1991 he has served on the State Advisory Council (SAC) to the Department of Children and Families. He has also served as chair of the Mental Health Subcommittee to the SAC since he became a member of the SAC. In 2000, Woolston served as co-chair of the Treatment and Intervention Subcommittee of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Mental Health.

Woolston received his undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1970 and earned his M.D. in 1973 from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed scientific articles and more than 25 invited chapters, and he has given over 20 national and international presentations. Woolston has also worked actively in child advocacy, child welfare and forensic matters. He has served as an expert witness in state and federal courts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Washington State. He has chaired committees of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association related to in-patient treatment for children and adolescents.