Susan Chinitz is a psychologist with specialties in the areas of infant mental health and developmental disabilities in infancy and early childhood. She was formerly a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and the Charles S. and Patricia T. Raizen Distinguished Scholar in Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and was the Director of the Early Childhood Center and the Center for Babies, Toddlers and Families at Einstein’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center. She is currently a consultant for the Center for Court Innovation and has helped to develop and launch the Strong Starts Court Initiative, a Family Court based model of practice designed to improve outcomes for infants and toddlers who are known to the court due to concerns about maltreatment.

Dr. Chinitz is on the Community Advisory Board of the NYC Nurse Family Partnership, the faculty of the Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Program at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the Professional Advisory Board for the New York Center for Child Development, and is a member of the New York City Early Childhood Mental Health Strategic Work Group.

Dr. Chinitz has obtained city, state and federal grants to provide developmental and infant mental health services in community-based programs for young children, including the first allocation of city funding specifically for infant and early childhood mental health services that supported the integration of infant and early childhood mental health services in primary pediatric care, preschools, foster care agencies and the Family Courts. She received a grant from the Administration on Children and Families to create the first Early Head Start Program in the Bronx; and one from the New York State Developmental Disabilities Planning Council to create a childcare and preschool program that provided developmental therapies and behavioral supports for children with disabilities and training for childcare staff.

Dr. Chinitz is an invited speaker at professional conferences and has authored chapters and journal articles related to psychological assessment of children with disabilities, social-emotional development in infancy and early childhood, young children with attachment disorders and developmental disabilities, young children in the foster care system, and trauma in infancy and early childhood.