The youth rights and resilience approach recognizes the global agreement on the protection from violence, the promotion of health, and the potential for wellness.
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The youth rights and resilience approach recognizes the global agreement on the protection from violence, the promotion of health, and the potential for wellness. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child paved the way to create sustainable goals for child and adolescent development and healthy living. This includes a public health attention to adolescence as a critical window of both risk and resilience, the need to prevent non-communicable diseases, and to promote intersectional, trauma-informed safe spaces and places for youth to explore, grow, and become.
Dr. Christine Wekerle
Dr. Christine Wekerle is an Associate Professor, Paediatrics, and Associate Member, Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
She is Editor-in-Chief of the premier international journal, Child Abuse & Neglect, and founding editor of the open access journal, International Journal of Child and Adolescent Resilience (www.in-car.ca). Her new book with colleagues, Childhood Maltreatment (2nd Edition), is targeted to practitioners, researchers, trainees and policy-makers in the area of child maltreatment. Her research focuses on youth who have had adverse childhood experiences and their current mental health and resilience. The Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways (MAP) Research Study partnered with Canada’s largest child welfare agencies to track youth outcomes across adolescents, and the research-to-action video was runner up in the CIHR IHDCYH Video Talks competition.
Her current team grant focuses on the impact of sexual violence victimization among male youth and young adults, seeking to understand components of resilience and developing intervention innovations. The #CIHRTeamSV research-to-action video won a special commendation prize in the CIHR Video Talks contest. These open access resources are available on the ResilienceInYouth YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also view them on the Open Access Resources page of this site. Dr. Wekerle and team have developed a ResilienceInYouth App to support day-to-day resilient functioning. She can be reached via email (wekerc@mcmaster.ca) and on Twitter @DrWekerle.