Handbook of Child Maltreatment

The second edition of this successful handbook, edited by well-known experts in this field, includes core questions in the field of child abuse and neglect. It addresses major challenges in child maltreatment work, starting with “What is child abuse and neglect?” and then examines why maltreatment occurs and what are its consequences. The handbook also addresses prevention, intervention, investigation, treatment as well as civil and criminal legal perspectives. It comprehensively studies the issue from the perspective of a broader, international and cross-cultural human experience. Apart from a thorough revision of existing chapters, this edition includes many new chapters covering recent developments in this area and other issues not covered in the first edition. There is more focus on substance abuse, psychological abuse, and on social and community involvement and public health provisions in the prevention of child maltreatment. The handbook examines what is known now and more importantly what remains to be researched in the coming decades to help abused and neglected children, their families and their communities, thereby taking the field forward.

Dr. Richard Krugman is one of the preeminent experts and scholars in the field of child abuse and neglect in this country and a protégé of Dr. C. Henry Kempe. He is still on the full-time faculty as a pediatrician and Distinguished University Professor at The Kempe Center, which he directed from 1981-1990.  He was Dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine from 1990-2015 and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs from 2007-2015.  In the 1970’s, he also served an appointment with the Public Health Service at the National Institute of Health and the Food and Drug Administration and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in Washington D.C 1980-1981. He chaired the AAP Child Abuse Committee in the 1980s, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect from 1988-1991, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2005. Throughout his career, he has authored over 120 original papers, chapters, editorials, and 6 books and has numerous awards and honors. In 2019, Dr. Krugman co-founded The National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect, with his former patient, Lori Poland, after retiring as Dean to try to extend the field of child abuse from being seen solely as a social and legal issue, to the health, public health and mental health issue it also is.

Jill E. Korbin, Ph.D. (UCLA 1978) is the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Professor of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio, USA). Korbin’s research interests include culture and human development; cultural, medical and psychological anthropology; neighborhood, community, and cultural and contextual influences on children and families; child maltreatment; and child and adolescent well-being.

Korbin’s awards include the Margaret Mead Award (1986) from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology; a Congressional Science Fellowship (1985-86) throughthe American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Research in Child Development; and the Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Case Western Reserve University. Korbin served on the National Research Council's Panel on Research on Child Abuse and Neglect, as a member of the Board of ChildFund International and as President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology.

Korbin and her colleagues have completed a NICHD-funded mixed methods project on the influence of neighborhood factors on child maltreatment and child well-being, studying the same Cleveland neighborhoods at two time periods, 20 years apart.

Korbin’s work on child maltreatment is primarily in relationship to culture and context, including neighborhood conditions. She edited the first volume on culture and child maltreatment, Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1981, University of California Press, reissued 2018). Korbin and Richard Krugman, are currently co-editing a book series, Child Maltreatment: Contemporary Issues in Research and Policy (Springer) that includes C. Henry Kempe: A 50 Year Legacy to Child Abuse and Neglect (Krugman and Korbin, 2013) and The Handbook of Child Maltreatment (Korbin and Krugman, 2014). With international editors Ben-Arieh, Cassas and Frones, she is a co-editor of the five-volume Handbook of Child Well-Being (Springer, 2014). She has a commitment to mixed methods research and bridging research, practice, and policy related to the well-being of children and young people.