Christine M. Forke, PhD, MSN, CRNP
Christine M. Forke, PhD, MSN, CRNP, is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and Core Faculty in the Public Health Program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). She is a Senior Scholar in the Center for Public Health and a Fellow at the Ortner Center on Family Violence at Penn and also is an Affiliate Research Scientist with the Center for Injury Research and Prevention and an Associate with the Center for Violence Prevention at CHOP. As a pediatric primary care nurse practitioner, specializing in adolescent health, Dr. Forke’s primary area of interest is exposure to childhood and adolescent trauma. She is one of the first members of the Philadelphia Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Task Force, a nationally recognized group that has widely promoted the importance of building trauma-informed communities; she serves on the Steering Committee and co-chairs the Research Workgroup. Foundationally, her work has been informed by her clinical experiences providing care to adolescents living in an urban setting; social determinants and health inequities are key aspects of her work. Dedicated to improving care for vulnerable populations, her current work focuses on delineating individual, family, and neighborhood stressors and protective factors that impact health, and identifying low-cost, evidence-based, and sustainable approaches that may improve health outcomes and disrupt the transmission of violence across generations by mitigating risks associated with childhood adversity.
