Christine Forke, CRNP, PhD is a licensed and nationally-certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, an Associate at the Center for Violence Prevention at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and an Affiliate Research Scientist at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP. Dr. Forke's targeted area of interest is understanding the intergenerational impacts of exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and intimate partner violence and identifying factors that can mitigate risk for children, adolescents, and families.

Her recent work has focused on gaining a better understanding of how gender and childhood exposures to violence impact subsequent adoption of risk behaviors and negative health outcomes. In a multi-site study of undergraduate students, she measured the combined effects of witnessing adult violence in the home during childhood and child/parent gender on later experiences with adolescent dating violence to demonstrate gender modeling in the transmission of violence. This prompted further exploration where she measured how witnessing domestic violence in childhood affected health into adulthood and in the next generation of children to illustrate the impact of witnessing across generations. 

Dr. Forke is the Co-Chair for the Philadelphia Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Task Force Research Workgroup, whose goal is to identify additional adversities that are specific to urban and/or impoverished communities while simultaneously considering the effects of both household and community level ACEs. Additionally, the workgroup strives to build collaborative efforts among those throughout the City who are working within the field of childhood adversity.  As part of this effort, the 2012 Philadelphia ACE Survey was developed and administered to a representative sample of over 1,700 Philadelphia area residents. A revised health survey is scheduled for 2018 administration and will provide information for approximately 2,000 parents and children residing in Philadelphia and the five county region. Information will be used to identify service needs for children and families. She has also partnered with the Philadelphia Department of Health to include ACE questions on a quarterly survey conducted at health centers within the City to provide information on the level of childhood trauma experienced by those seeking care.

She currently is working on a project that will solicit the opinions of national experts in the development of a tool that will be used by pediatric hospitals to assess their institutional capacity to care for pediatric patients exposed to family violence. Use of the tool will allow hospitals to identify their strengths as well as areas where improvement is needed in order to impart change at the system level.