Myron L. Belfer, M.D., M.P.A. is Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, and Senior Associate in Psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of Boston. He is on the Affiliated Faculty of the Harvard Center for the Developing Child. He received a Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

He was Director of the Consultation-Liaison Service at Children’s Hospital Boston. From 1981 to 2001 he was Chair of Psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital and from 1991 to 1994 served as Special Assistant to the Administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Dr. Belfer is former Senior Adviser in the Department of Mental Disorders and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization in Geneva where he led the child mental health program from 2000 to 2005. In that capacity he was instrumental in supporting a number of global child mental health initiatives. He is past-President of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP). He co-directs the Children’s Hospital Boston Global Child Mental Health Observership Program and directs for the Harvard Center on the Developing Child a comprehensive child mental health needs assessment in schools in Shanghai with Chinese colleagues.  

His current interests are in global child mental health policy and the mental health response in disaster situations. He has published more than 100 articles and chapters on a range of child mental health topics including body image development in children, the response to natural disasters and mental health policy.