WASHINGTON (September 13, 2024) — "It’s an honor to be part of this legacy, both personally and professionally," said Dr. Wendy Ellis, who recently won the Academy on Violence and Abuse’s Vincent J. Felitti Distinguished Scholar Award.
This distinction is given annually to exceptional professionals “who are advancing education on the prevention, recognition, and treatment of the health effects of violence and abuse,” as stated on the AVA website. The ceremony was on September 12 at the AAMC Learning Center in Washington, DC and Dr. Ellis was invited to give a one-hour talk on the topic of her choice.
Dr. Ellis is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for Community Resilience at the Milken Institute School of Public Health. She also serves as Director of GW's Institute for Racial, Ethnic and Socioeconomic Equity. She has an unconventional background — she first served as a TV news producer in the late 1990s, when she came upon a story about a neglected and abused young girl who died in Seattle. "The child was utterly failed by an under-resourced system and many people in her community, not to mention her own family," said Dr. Ellis.
Working on this story fundamentally changed Dr. Ellis — she soon left journalism to earn her DrPH in Health Policy. She came to focus her work on understanding and activating levers to help children and communities not only prevent such tragedies but also thrive.
Using the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences that links the experience of childhood traumas such as neglect and abuse to increased health and social risks later in life, Dr. Ellis built her visionary "Pair of Aces" framework. This framework demonstrates the tangled mess that failing community environments such as poor housing, poverty, discrimination, and violence create for families, especially those with substance abuse, mental health, or other severe problems. This work was also a personal discovery for Dr. Ellis, as she had a context for her own high ACE score and could understand how the supportive community she grew up in helped her overcome her own adversity.
Through the Center, Dr. Ellis forged the Building Community Resilience (BCR) network and tools, which cross disciplines and systems to shape “examples of what community resilience looks like—with good resources, summer programs, parks, supportive adults and schools, and positive places for kids to relieve anxiety and build confidence,” she said.
All of her efforts and continuing research have a particular focus on equity and prevention and assess the root causes of community and family disparities. Through the Center and its networks, Dr. Ellis engages diverse groups, policymakers, and health professionals to make positive, systemic change, and her models are being adopted by communities nationwide.
Dr. Ellis' work at the Center for Community Resilience has created two national networks of community-driven initiatives focused on convening across sectors to drive systems change. The Building Community Resilience (BCR) collaborative and Resilience Catalysts networks do this by implementing Dr. Ellis’ BCR process and the Community Resilience framework developed during her doctoral studies at The George Washington University. The BCR process and Community Resilience framework are being used in more than 30 U.S.-based public-private partnerships and has been adopted in government and academic-based initiatives in ten countries across the globe. Dr. Ellis’ Community Resilience framework is featured in a special issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice focused on addressing structural racism as a public health initiative.
Dr. Ellis’ work is far-reaching and bold, and she credits GW for giving her a platform and the support to succeed. "Only at an institution as great as GW could such a groundbreaking and impactful program be produced," says Dr. Ellis, "I am grateful to be a part of it."