David L. Corwin, MD Bio
David L. Corwin, MD
ACEs Health Champion’s Gathering on April 17, 2026
Dr. Corwin is board certified in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry and was board certified in Forensic Psychiatry for 20 years. He is a Professor in the Pediatrics Department at the University of Utah where he directs Forensic Services. He has worked as a lecturer, consultant, evaluator and/or expert addressing child abuse throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Dr. Corwin founded the California Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (CAPSAC) and chaired the group that founded the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) in 1986. He helped found the Ray Helfer Society in 1999 and the Academy on Violence and Abuse (AVA) in 2004. From 2009 to 2010, he co-chaired the transition of the American Medical Association’s National Advisory Council on Violence and Abuse into the National Health Collaborative on Violence and Abuse (NHCVA) on which he now represents APSAC.
Among Dr. Corwin’s primary focuses are the evaluation, mitigation and prevention of the adverse health impacts associated with experiencing violence and abuse across the life course. Dr. Corwin is the Executive Producer of AVA’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Study videos released in January of 2012 and the editor-in-chief of the AVA/NHCVA “About ACEs” online series on the AVA website. He has also addressed the harms of child sexual image exploitation and helped draft the APSAC policy statement on the harms of child pornography. In recent years he has worked to end corporal punishment in the United States as an Executive Committee member of the National Initiative to End Corporal Punishment.
In 1993, Dr. Corwin joined his colleague and first author Erna Olafson, PhD, PsyD, and his mentor Roland Summit, MD in publishing the “Modern History of Child Sexual Abuse Awareness: Cycles of Discovery and Suppression” in Child Abuse and Neglect. He and Brooks Keeshin, MD published “Child Sexual Abuse - Discovery, Professionalization and Institutionalization: 40 Years of Struggle and Progress in the USA” in the Korean journal Gender Studies Policy Review. These history articles are available from Dr. Corwin at davecorwin123@gmail.com.
In 2019, Dr. Corwin chaired the “Illustrated History of the Last 70+ Years of Development of the Child Maltreatment Field in the USA with John EB Myers, Randell Alexander, MD, PhD, Kathleen Faller, PhD, Sandra Alexander, MA, Bea Yorker, JD, MS, BS., Barbara Bonner, PhD, Robert Parish, JD, Victor Vieth, JD, MA, David Finkelhor, PhD, and Donna Pence, BS that was presented at the Salt Lake City APSAC Colloquium and is posted on the APSAC website at: https://apsac.org/videos/70-years-of-cm/.
