New medical director appointed for the CHD

Date: 1/5/2009

SPRINGFIELD Dr. Louis Velazquez has recently been appointed as the new medical director for the Center for Human Development (CHD).

Velazquez joins CHD at a time when the merger with Child & Family Service brings valuable clinical services to the organization. He will play a major role in supervising CHD's clinicians, all of CHD's psychiatrists, and assisting with the training of staff at all levels. Additionally, Velazquez will play a significant part in CHD's interdisciplinary team of professionals that evaluate and supervise the work done by their clinician staff.

Velazquez brings a wealth of experience to the CHD services. He received his BS from Yale College, his Master's in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and his MD from the University of Michigan Medical School. He did his residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and completed his Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University.

First practicing in central Maine, Velazquez developed a special purpose school and residential facility for conditions that affects children who have been removed from families of origin and children of socioeconomic strife and adversity; these disorders are collectively known as disruptive behavior.

In time Velazquez became concerned with the way psychiatric medications were being used to treat troubled children and adolescents, and began to voice pharmacological prudence and a return to a true bio-psycho-social model of intervention.

Velazquez has worked in Maine, New York, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Massachusetts. He brings to CHD a heightened level of clinical services and a link between the psychological and the physical needs of clients.

CHD consists of more than 50 human service programs, some of which date back to 1877. Its philosophy and history center on helping people in communities throughout Western Massachusetts and Northwestern Connecticut. CHD serves more than 6,000 clients annually.

In 2008, its more than 1,100 dedicated staff advanced the mission of providing a broad range of high quality, vital and dignified support services for foster babies and children; homeless children and their families; troubled youth, people with psychiatric, mental and developmental disabilities, the elderly and those leaving incarceration; all of which improve the quality of our communities.

For more information visit www.chd.org.