2025 ISTSS Board of Directors Election Results:
Celebrating Our New Leadership
The 2025 ISTSS Nominations and Elections Committee, chaired by Board Member and Immediate Past President Angela Nickerson, PhD, is delighted to share the following results of this year’s ISTSS Board of Directors election. Congratulations to all who were elected, and our sincere thanks to all who agreed to be nominated.
Synne Øien Stensland, MD, PhD
President-Elect
Denise Hien, PhD, ABPP
Board Member
Jana Javakhishvili, PhD**
Board Member
Birgit Kleim, PhD
Board Member
Rachel Liebman, PhD**
Board Member
Sarah Lowe, PhD
Board Member
Jun Shigemura, MD, PhD
Board Member
Melissa Zielinski, PhD
Board Member
President-Elect: Synne Øien Stensland, MD, PhD
Board Members:
Denise Hien, PhD, ABPP; Jana Javakhishvili, PhD**; Birgit Kleim, PhD; Rachel Liebman, PhD**; Sarah Lowe, PhD; Jun Shigemura, MD, PhD; Melissa Zielinski, PhD
**Current Board Members re-elected to serve another term.
Bringing Together Scientists, Clinicians, and Communities From Around the World to Advance the Field of Traumatic Stress.
Healing Trauma Together
The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies is dedicated to sharing information about the effects of trauma and the discovery and dissemination of knowledge about policy, program and service initiatives that seek to reduce traumatic stressors and their immediate and long-term consequences. ISTSS is an international interdisciplinary professional organization that promotes advancement and exchange of knowledge about traumatic stress.
NEW ISTSS Webinar: Opening Access to Address Trauma and Treat PTSD in Primary Care
Join Dr. Sheila Rauch—national leader in trauma and PTSD treatment—as she explores how to broaden access to effective care by integrating trauma-informed approaches within primary care. This session will highlight system-level models for improving access and introduce PE-PC (Processing Emotions in Primary Care), a brief and powerful intervention tailored for primary care settings. Ideal for healthcare professionals seeking practical, scalable strategies to address PTSD beyond specialty mental health.
Conversations and Consultations
Our Conversations and Consultation series is a members-only series that provides members with the opportunity to exchange valuable insight and advice with subject-matter experts, mentors, and/or colleagues in the trauma field. Each session is facilitated by one or more experts and presented to ISTSS members as a free membership benefit.
Grow Your Professional Network by Volunteering with ISTSS
Volunteers play an integral role in ISTSS' day-to-day activities and form a broad professional network. Interested in adding an ISTSS volunteer position to your CV?
A score of 27 or greater on the Moral Injury and Distress Scale (MIDS) identifies clinically meaningful and impairing moral injury – Sonya B. Norman, Shira Maguen, Brandon J. Griffin
Background on Moral Injury Moral injury is the emotional pain and functional impairment people can experience after participating in, failing to prevent, or witnessing highly stressful events that transgress their beliefs about right and wrong. In recent years, there...
Using registries and electronic health record data to study posttraumatic psychopathology – Laura Sampson, Ananda B. Amstadter, Kelsey N. Serier, & Jaimie L. Gradus
Overview of Electronic Health Record data As in many fields, the use of “big data” has become more common in psychiatric research, alongside major technologic and computational advances in recent decades. Electronic health records (EHR) can be considered...
A Comprehensive Look at PTSD, Care Seeking, and VA Use Among Veterans – Yunnuo Zhu
Military service, and combat deployment in particular, has been found to be strongly associated with an increased risk of developing PTSD (Armenta et al., 2018; Hoge et al., 2006; Porter et al., 2018). The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides disability...