Affiliates
Dr. Josef Ruzek retired as Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD Dissemination and Training Division in April 2018, after helping improve PTSD services in VA for over 26 years. Dr. Ruzek is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Co-Director of the Center for m2 Health at Palo Alto University, and a Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He has been a member of the VHA Undersecretary’s Special Committee on PTSD and served as psychotherapy champion for the joint VA-DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for Management of Traumatic Stress. He edited several volumes on treatment of PTSD, including Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies for Trauma and Caring for Veterans with Deployment-Related Stress Disorders: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond. Dr. Ruzek is a past member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. He specializes in early intervention to prevent the development of PTSD, dissemination of evidence-based treatments for PTSD, and development and evaluation of Internet- and smartphone-based interventions for trauma survivors. He is a developer of multiple preventive interventions, including Psychological First Aid, Skills for Psychological Recovery, Skills fOr Life Adjustment and Resilience (SOLAR), and dyadic intervention for recent trauma survivors. His team at the National Center for PTSD developed widely used apps for mental health, including PTSD Coach and PTSD Family Coach, and he worked with NIHR’s Dr. Benight to develop the MyTraumaRecovery suite of Internet interventions for traumatic stress.