Max Hayman Award

The Max Hayman Award honors distinguished scholarship in the mental health disciplines that contributes to the elimination of genocide and the remembrance of the Holocaust.

Award Recipients

2020 | Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA

Sofia Gruskin (@sofiagruskin) directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health (IIGH). She is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chief of the Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health Division at the Keck School of Medicine, Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law, and an affiliate faculty member with the Spatial Sciences Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Gruskin currently sits on numerous international boards and committees including the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board, the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health, the IUSSP Steering Committee to Strengthen Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems, and the Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights. She is co-coordinator of the Rights-Oriented Research and Education Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health, an international network of sexual and reproductive health and rights researchers and advocates from the Global South and the Global North. Professor Gruskin has published extensively, including several books, training manuals and edited journal volumes, and more than 200 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. She is an associate editor for Global Public Health, on the editorial advisory board for Revue Internationale des Études du Développement, a trustee of Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, and was an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health and editor in chief for Health and Human Rights both for over a decade.

A pioneer in bringing together multi-disciplinary approaches to global health, Professor Gruskin’s work, which ranges from global policy to the grassroots level, has been instrumental in developing the conceptual, methodological and empirical links between health and human rights, with a focus on HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, child and adolescent health, gender-based violence, non-communicable disease and health systems.

2019 | Karina L. Walters, PhD, MSW

Dr. Karina L. Walters, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is the Associate Dean for Research, the Katherine Hall Chambers Scholar, and the co-Director and Principal Investigator of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI) at the University of Washington. Dr. Walters has more than 25 years of experience in social epidemiological research on the historical, social, and cultural determinants of health among AIAN populations as well as chronic disease prevention research (e.g., HIV, AOD, obesity). Her research has targeted urban AIANs and LGBT-Two Spirit AIAN populations across the United States. In recent years, Dr. Walters has expanded her research foci to include tribally based intervention research in the areas of substance abuse, obesity, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS prevention, particularly among American Indian women.

2018 | Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, PhD

A social worker and expert in mental health, Dr. Brave Heart is best known for her efforts to understand mental health and substance abuse in indigenous populations and to intervene to help indigenous populations heal from historical trauma. Her work focuses on indigenous collective trauma, grief and loss, and healing intervention for indigenous populations. Dr. Brave Heart is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of Native American and Disparities Research at the University. Additionally, she founded the Takini Institute in South Dakota and developed the “Historical Trauma and Unresolved Grief Intervention” designed to reduce the suffering of Indigenous Peoples. Watch Dr. Brave Heart talk about her experience working with native peoples in this interview with Smith College School for Social Work.

2017 | Jeannie Annan, PhD

Dr. Jeannie Annan is the director of research and evaluation at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining the IRC, Dr. Annan worked for nongovernmental education and child protection programs in Kosovo, northern Uganda, and South Sudan. Her research focuses on sexual and gender-based violence against women, children and youth in armed conflict, and psychosocial programs for victims of wartime and sexual violence.

2013 | Margot Stern Strom

Margot Stern Strom was recognized for her work with Facing History and Ourselves, which she founded, and which reminds us of the importance of history in shaping the future. Facing History is built on the belief that individuals have the capacity to make a difference if they understand the past. Through pilot workshops and in consultation with scholars and teachers, Stern Strom created the Facing History scope and sequence: the journey that students undertake to learn about the impact of history on their own lives and their futures. Beginning with the concept of individual and group identity, the study then examines the failure of democracy and the steps leading to the Holocaust. The program further explores difficult questions of judgment, memory, and legacy. It concludes with the necessity for responsible participation in protecting and promoting democracy, justice, and human dignity today and for generations to come. Later, Stern Strom brought exhibitions, community conversations, and online dialogues to wider audiences in the community, including a vibrant, engaged adult learning community.

2011 | James Garbarino, PhD

Dr. James Garbarino was honored for distinction in efforts directed toward the elimination of genocide and the amelioration of its effects. Perhaps more than any contemporary scholar or commentator, Dr. Garbarino has educated both the general public and human service professionals about the nature of social toxicity and its meaning and consequences for children, adolescents, and their families.

In a program of scholarship that has spanned three decades, Dr. Garbarino has illuminated the powerful relationship between community well-being and child safety—work that has served as the basis for neighborhood-level efforts to change norms of parental care and family support so that children will be safer, both in their homes and across the community. Dr. Garbarino’s concern for children’s personal security has also long been at a societal level. In landmark books beginning in the late 1990s, he has presented compelling stories of the situation for children amid armed conflict in some of the world’s poorest countries and amid gang warfare in some of our nation’s cities. The list of venues for Dr. Garbarino’s research is a litany of some of the most horrific settings for children in recent decades. He has told stories of child survivors of political violence in Bosnia, Croatia, El Salvador, Iraq, Kuwait, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Palestine, Sudan, and Vietnam. Even in those contexts, Dr. Garbarino has focused on personal and social transformation through the integration of spirituality and democratic values. He has given new attention to the importance of meaning in the lives of young people, including his own students. In so doing, he has shown the psychological, theological, and ethical foundations for human rights—childhood experiences of being treated like somebody.

2010 | Don Coyhis

Don Coyhis, Mohican Nation, is the president and founder of White Bison, Inc., an American Indian non-profit organization. Mr. Coyhis’ efforts to understand alcoholism among Indian youth on the reservations led him to found Wellbriety, which means to be sober and well. Wellbriety is a movement aimed at addressing drug addiction, dysfunctional families and relationships and the suicide rate among Indians. Mr. Coyhis was honored for his visionary leadership in the application of traditional values and principles to foster a social movement toward Wellbriety. He relies on elders’ stories to strengthen sense of community and therefore to embrace those who have suffered most from historical trauma. He prods communities to look within themselves for values that can undergird lasting change and, in so doing, transform individuals, families, and society itself. As a teacher and advocate, he has spread a message of reconciliation and healing, person to person and people to people, across North America.

2009 | African Refuge and ITSP

African Refuge, a program of the International Trauma Studies Program (ITSP) at Columbia University was honored for exemplary humanitarian service to African refugees and immigrants on Staten Island. African Refuge is a grassroots community-based organization for people of diverse cultures. African Refuge provides a safe haven for recovery from the atrocities that occurred in civil wars and other political violence in Liberia and other West African countries. Promoting a climate of mutual assistance and respect, the leaders of African Refuge have drawn creatively on linkages with the broader community. Both using and expanding community assets, African Refuge offers a variety of activities designed to enhance refugees’ and immigrants’ adaptation to the practical requirements of life in a vastly different society. In so doing, African Refuge has made important contributions to the quality of participants’ daily life—their safety, education, employment, recreation, cultural experience, family life, and physical and mental health.

2007 | Carlinda Monteiro, PhD

Dr. Carlinda Monteiro is deputy director of Christian Children’s Fund-Angola. Dr. Monteiro has been trained in social work and specializes in the treatment of war-affected children and families. Dr. Monteiro was recognized for her pioneering efforts to integrate African and Western approaches to the treatment of war-affected children, her sensitive analysis of the delicate balance between “forgiving and forgetting” during reconciliation after armed conflict, her creative use of community rituals in such a process, her leadership in the re-integration of child soldiers, and her advocacy of the rights of children in zones of armed conflict.

2006 | Ervin Staub, PhD

Dr. Ervin Staub was honored for his profound scholarship on the momentous question of the roots of good and evil. Building on his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust, Dr. Staub has made important contributions to research on altruism and helping behavior and, by contrast, genocide and collective violence. A prolific researcher on the causes of genocide, Dr. Staub has applied this work in action research on forgiveness and reconciliation, notably among community groups in Rwanda. The founder of an innovative program of doctoral study on the Psychology of Peace and the Prevention of Violence and a past president of the Society of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, a division of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Staub has been a leader in stimulating and integrating professional contributions to the resolution of some of the most vexing problems of the human condition.