David Schonfeld, MD
David J. Schonfeld, M.D., Director, National Center for School Crisis and
Bereavement (NCSCB) and Director, Division of Developmental and Behavioral
Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, has provided consultation,
technical assistance, and training in the areas of pediatric bereavement and
school crisis preparedness and response for more than 20 years. He has provided
presentations at national and international meetings and worked with communities
throughout the United States and abroad (including Europe, Great Britain, Asia,
the Middle East, Scandinavia, Latin America, and Africa). In 1991, Dr. Schonfeld
established the School Crisis Response Program at Yale University School of
Medicine, where he provided training to tens of thousands of school-based personnel
throughout the country and technical assistance in hundreds of school crisis
events. Dr. Schonfeld has consulted with schools during the aftermath of numerous
school (including school shootings and other school violence) and national crisis
events. From 2001 to 2004, he consulted to the New York City Department of
Education and coordinated training for school crisis teams in the wake of the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and provided training to more than 1,000 district-
and school-level crisis teams within the system. In 2005, Dr. Schonfeld was
awarded funding by the September 11th Children’s Fund and the National
Philanthropic Trust to establish the NCSCB. Dr. Schonfeld has worked with
schools coping with large-scale natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans in 2005; Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas, in 2008; and the 2008 earthquake
in Sichuan, China. Dr. Schonfeld is currently a member of the National
Commission on Children and Disasters, the Disaster Mental Health Subcommittee
of the National Biodefense Science Board, and the American Academy of
Pediatrics’s Disaster Preparedness Advisory Council. He is actively engaged in
school-based research involving children’s understanding of and adjustment to serious
illness and death and school-based interventions to promote adjustment and
risk prevention.