Christina Bethell

Christina Bethell (she/her) is a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and School of Medicine and a Nova Institute Scholar. Her research and advocacy work focuses on building and translating the science of healthy development to promote early and lifelong health of children, youth, families, and communities. 

With roots in national and state healthcare policy, financing reform and delivery system redesign to promote whole child and family health and integrated services, Dr. Bethell is the founding director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative which since 1996 has worked to promote early and lifelong health of children, youth and families through family centered data, tools and research, including the National Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health and the family-engaged Well Visit Planner digital tool.  

She has developed and advanced to national and state use an array of child and family health measures addressing the social and relational roots of well-being and the quality of the health care systems. This includes nationally and internationally used measures on the Family Centered Medical Home, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Positive Childhood Experiences, Family Resilience and Connection, Child Flourishing, and the Whole Child Risk Index.

Her research has shaped policies regarding adverse and positive childhood experiences and relational health promotion, including the national Prioritizing Possibilities agenda to prevent and address ACEs and promote human flourishing, providing testimony to the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform on identifying, preventing, and treating childhood trauma, informing the American Academy of Pediatrics relational health policy statement and the design of the Engagement In Action (EnAct!) Framework to catalyze statewide integrated relational systems of care to promote child, youth and family well-being.

She earned an M.BA. and an M.PH. from the University of California, Berkeley and Ph.D. in public policy and health services research and policy from the University of Chicago. She leads the We Are the Medicine® action plan to translate the science of inner and relational health, serves on the Boards for The Academy of Inner Science, Pocket Project, the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice and the Center for the Advancement of Innovative Health Practices. 

She dances, writes poetry and believes the authentic connection with ourselves, others and life is the source of our creativity and joy.