Skin Injuries

Child Abuse Pocket Atlas Series, Volume 1: Skin Injuries is the first volume in an ongoing series on child maltreatment. Skin injuries are among the most common and visible symptoms of physical abuse in children. Because professionals who work with children are likely to encounter such injuries and thus be in a position to intervene, it is vital for them to be able to differentiate accidental injuries from abusive ones.

Randell Alexander, MD, PhD, FAAP
Randell Alexander is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Florida and the Morehouse School of Medicine. He currently serves as chief of the Division of Child Protection and Forensic Pediatrics and interim chief of the Division of Developmental Pediatrics at the University of Florida-Jacksonville. In addition, he is the statewide medical director of child protections teams for the Department of Health's Children's Medical Services and is part of the International Advisory Board for the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome. He has also served as vice chair of the US Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, on the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, and the boards of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) and Prevent Child Abuse America. Randell Alexander has served on state child death review committees in Iowa, Georgia, and Florida, and two regional child death review committees. He is an active researcher, lectures widely, and testifies frequently in major child abuse cases throughout the country.
Angelo P. Giardino, MD, PhD, MPH, FAAP
Angelo Giardino is the medical director of Texas Children's Health Plan, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, and an attending physician for the Texas Children's Hospital's forensic pediatrics service at the Children's Assessment Center in Houston, Texas. Angelo Giardino completed his residency and fellowship training in pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Immediately after his fellowship training, Angelo Giardino became the assistant, and then the associate, medical director at Health Partners of Philadelphia, where he had primary responsibility for utilization management, intensive case management, and health care data analysis. He also shared responsibility for the plan's quality improvement program. Additionally, he began the Child Abuse and Neglect Team for Children with Special Health Care Needs, which was funded by a three-year grant from a local philanthropy. In 1998, he was appointed associate chair of clinical operations in the Department of Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and in June of 1999 he was asked to chair the CHOP Quality Committee. These accomplishments are only a few of his career.
Debra Esernio-Jenssen, MD
Debra Esernio-Jenssen, M.D. is currently a Professor in Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Florida and has served as the Medical Director of the Child Protection Team since 2010. In 2009 she was certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in Child Abuse Pediatrics. From 1998 to April 2010, she was the Director of the Child Protection Center at Schneider Children s Hospital and the Chair of the Child Protection Consultation Team at Long Island Jewish Hospital in New Hyde Park, New York. She graduated from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1982 and completed her pediatric residency at North Shore University in Manhasset, NY where she was selected to be Chief Resident in Pediatrics in 1985. In 2007, she was invited to join the Ray Helfer Society. She is a member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and serves on the Board for the Florida Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. Debra Esernio-Jenssen has a special interest in prevention. Since her arrival in Gainesville, FL she has produced a domestic violence and an abusive head trauma public service announcement. These announcements have been shown on the Gator Board which is seen before every University of Florida home football game and have been distributed throughout the 12 county catchment area her team serves.