Kaak Featured on Special Health Report Airing on KET

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 21, 2014) — Dr. Otto Kaak, associate director of the University of Kentucky’s Center on Trauma and Children, will be featured in KET’s new Health Special Report Safe and Sound: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children in a Stressful World, premiering at 9 p.m., Monday, April 21, on KET.

Safe and Sound will discuss the e importance of young children receiving positive nurturing and early experiences in order to develop good long-term mental and physical health. The program will present ways  parents can generate positive social and mental health for their children through interviews with experts an d profiles of programs across Kentucky that specialize in this field.

During the program, Kaak contributes important research findings from the UK Center of Trauma and Children and helpful advice for parents concerning the enhancement of the well-being of children. He focuses on developing and utilizing methods that can improve the health of abused children, through the research of the Center, whose main emphasis is identifying the source of problems displayed by children affected by trauma or abuse.

Kaak, a professor of psychiatry, pediatrics, and social work for UK, has worked for the university since 1972, where he now primarily assists in evaluating families with open, substantiated cases of abuse or neglect.

The Center on Trauma and Children at UK mission is to develop and distribute knowledge and practices that will contribute to the reduction and end of violence against children and its traumatic effects. The Center specializes on developing evidence-based behavioral health practices with children, families and adults whose lives have been affected by violence.