Congenital Heart Disease and Neurodevelopment Understanding and Improving Outcomes

After attaining a first class honours and PhD in Psychology from The Queen's University of Belfast Christopher McCusker completed his Clinical Psychology training at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London in 1991. Since that time he has combined clinical practice with leading the Doctoral programme for Clinical Psychology training in Northern Ireland and with research related to his clinical interests. He has been chair of the professional body for Clinical Psychology in Northern Ireland and had led on developments in training standards for the profession within the UK.

For the past 15 years his research has focused on understanding the determinants of outcomes for children with chronic illness and their families. This has been across pediatric specialisms including acquired brain injury, epilepsy, neurodevelopmental disorders and congenital heart disease. He has authored numerous publications in these domains and, most importantly, has translated knowledge of risk and protective factors into new progams of early psychological interventions to promote resilience in these children and their families. In this book he presents the Congenital Heart disease Intervention Progam (CHIP) which is the first of such programs internationally for these children and their families.

Dr. Frank Casey is Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist at The Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Child Health at Queen's University, Belfast.

He trained In Paediatric Cardiology in Belfast and at The Hospital for Sick Children Toronto.

Dr. Casey is the Clinical Lead for the newly developed All-Ireland Paediatric Cardiology Network. He is also the Chairperson of The Psychosocial Working group of The Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology.

For more than 20 years he has led a research program in Belfast focused on the Biophysical, Neurodevelopmental and Psychosocial outcome for children with congenital heart disease. This work has pioneered interventional programs to modify lifestyle behaviors in children treated for congenital heart disease including the landmark Congenital Heart Disease Intervention Program described in this book. He has many publications from that research program and is recognized as an International leader in this area of work.