Yvonne Vissing, Ph.D., is a clinical sociologist focusing on pediatrics and community sociology. She is the author of 15 books about children's wellbeing and is the US policy chair for the Hope for Children UN Convention of the Rights of the Child Policy Center. She is a member of the Human Rights Council for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the Steering Committee of the Human Rights Educators USA, former National Institute of Mental Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, and 2021 fellow at the University of Connecticut Dodd Human Rights Center Dialogue and Democracy Initiative. She is a former board member of the National Coalition for the Homeless and the New Hampshire Juvenile Parole Board as well as a former family-child mental health counselor in Kentucky. She received the 2021 Distinguished Career Award in the sociology of children for the American Sociological Association’s section on Children and Youth. Vissing is professor and founding director of the Center for Childhood & Youth Studies at Salem State University, USA, where she is also co-founder of its Department of Healthcare Studies. Her research interests include human rights, clinical sociology, mental health, homelessness, community development, instrument development, public health, violence, social movements, sociology of law, mediation, and the use of dialogue to address community problems. She is also a Santa Claus expert who owns a small horse farm in New Hampshire.
