“I returned to school, finished my doctorate, and turned 65 in the same month.
The graduation party invitation read: Dr. Butterworth gets Medicare” to encourage others!”
Dr. Lori Butterworth has been honored as one of the leading child advocates in the State of California. After 13 years as a bilingual educator in the inner-city, Lori founded Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services from her kitchen table and transformed it into a multi-million dollar, multi-faceted support network for families of childdren with cancer. Under her leadership, Jacob’s Heart earned multiple regional and national awards for its model of compassionate, family-centered care, and continues to provide support to thousands every year.
In response to a public health crisis in access to palliative care for seriously ill and dying children, Lori co-founded the Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition of California and built a state-wide coalition, spearheading healthcare policies including Provision 2305 of the Affordable Care Act, which transformed access to care for seriously ill children and their families.
With a crisis in youth mental health burgeoning in the wake of COVID, Lori recently served as CEO of AIM Youth Mental Health. Under her leadership, the organization increased revenue by 155%, the Youth Mental Health Symposium grew 4-fold, and programs expanded exponentially. Now, with a growing need to expand access to youth mental health care, Lori and Dr. Ramona Friedman are building the Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Hearlth (CCAMH) in Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo Counties, with a singularly focussed mission and unwavering dedication to make mental health care accessible to all kids where and when they need it.
Lori’s awards include Oprah Winfrey’s Use Your Life Award; the California Association of Nonprofits Achievement in Innovation Award; the City of Hope award for outstanding leadership, commitment, and advocacy for children and families, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Award of Excellence for advocating for health system changes to bring about better care for children. And she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Red Cross.
Inspired by her grandfather who earned his PhD at 73, Lori is life-long learner, recently adding a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology to her educational accomplishmensts. In addition to her PsyD, Lori earned a Masters in Psychology from Harvard University, a Master of Education from University of Maryland, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her Dissertation was on Evidence-based treatments for adolescent anxiety. She did a lot of research on the impact of social media on adolescent anxiety and OCD and that is the focus of her psychotherapy practice.
Lori and her husband Joe raised two amazing children, Matt and Johanna, and spend as much time as they can with their two grandsons, William and Michael.