(Posted November 4, 2002)

HUNTINGDON. Pa. -- James Lavelle, director of international programs and community organizing at the Harvard Program for Refugee Trauma, will speak at Juniata College on "Social Work for World Peace: Clinical, Educational, Research and Policy Advice" at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 7 in the Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The event is free and open to the public.

Lavelle's talk will focus on using the accepted methods of social work in new ways, by turning them "upside down" in order to offer scientific, radical and effective ideas in places where trouble has come to the fore.

Lavelle co-founded the Harvard program in 1981 and began his career working with refugees in 1978 as director of the Indochinese Refugee Mental Health Program. He also co-founded the Indochinese Psychiatry Clinic in 1981.

He helped develop the Harvard Training Program in refugee trauma, which trained more than 100 physicians in trauma issues across Cambodia. In 1994, he started a training program for health and mental health professionals in Bosnia and Croatia that continues today. In 1995, he traveled to Japan to help after that country's devastating earthquake in Kobe.

Recently, he has worked with the Massachusetts Office of Refugee Resettlement, which helps refugees seeking asylum and survivors of torture find health care and legal help at five sites around the state.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.