About Us
The Vermont Center for Children, Youth, and Families (VCCYF) includes the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, and The University of Vermont Medical Center. The VCCYF has a deep commitment to education with both a 5 year combined Adult-Child and Adolescent residency program and a traditional 2 year Child and Adolescent Fellowship Program. In addition, the VCCYF team is deeply committed to the education of general psychiatry residents, pediatric residents (through a novel ‘buddy program’ that teams senior pediatric residents with VCCYF Fellows), medical students, graduates students, social work students, nurse practitioners, and undergraduate students in the nationally known VCCYF undergrad program, the UVM Wellness Environment.
In addition to education, the VCCYF team is equally committed to our research mandates with a long term goal of understanding why some children suffer from psychiatric illness while others do not and how best to guide children and families who struggle with emotional behavioral illness on the road to well-being. The team is actively engaged in the research fields of epidemiology, neuroimaging, genetics, epigenetics, biosensor technologies, digital health promotion via app development, and health promotion and illness prevention approaches in child psychiatry, pediatric, and educational settings. We have an active applied research program in which we aim to improve the utility of using telemedicine technology to deliver family based health care to our most vulnerable families and at the same time provide needed digital health promotion and illness prevention therapies during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Last and most importantly, the VCCYF team, is deeply committed to providing the absolute best and up to date health care we are able to. The Vermont Family Based Approach (VFBA) was designed, developed, tested and implemented at the VCCYF and is the fundamental manner in which we offer our health promotion, illness prevention, and family based intelligent intervention program for all of the emotional-behavioral challenges a child and his, her, or their family members face.
We see over 8000 patient visits a year and continue to partner with our colleagues in the State of Vermont, VCHIP and our pediatric community to aspire to provide the best we can to Vermont’s most vulnerable children and families.
History of Vermont Center for Children, Youth, and Families
The VCCYF was developed in 1999 and James Hudziak, M.D. became Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The Division is active in research activities funded through the NIH, State of Vermont funding, and national and international collaborations in research. In 2007, with the consolidation of the Research Center for Children, Youth, and Families, and the endowment of Dr. Hudziak as the first Achenbach Endowed Chair in Developmental Psychopathology, Dr. Hudziak became the Director of the Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families. In December 2021, Dr. Hudziak retired from the University of Vermont.