Dr. Giovanni Abrahão Salum is the Senior Vice President for Global Programs at the Child Mind Institute and the Director of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. He also serves as Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil. Dr. Salum has held several leadership roles in Brazil’s public health system. He served as Director of Mental Health Services at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (2021–2022), and previously directed both the adult and the child & adolescent units of the hospital’s Community Center for Mental Health Services (2019–2021). From 2017 to 2019, he was Director of the Mental Health System in Porto Alegre, overseeing citywide planning and delivery of services. His academic and clinical expertise lies in epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, and treatment research within the public health system.
His current work emphasizes the co-creation of grassroots solutions with underserved communities, expanding access and training in evidence-based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents, and the development of innovative technologies that can be deployed in real-world settings to improve the assessment and treatment of mental health conditions.