Candace J. Erickson, MD, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, is the Director of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at the Brooklyn Hospital Center and an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1987, Dr. Erickson developed and implemented the first 3-day, skill building Clinical Hypnosis Workshop for pediatric health care professionals as a pre-meeting workshop of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics (SDBP) Annual Scientific Meetings. For 22 years, Dr. Erickson was Course Director, SDBP Pediatric Clinical Hypnosis Workshops, bringing together a core teaching faculty (now NPHTI’s senior faculty): she received a SDBP Award for this service.

Dr. Erickson has been senior faculty since NPHTI’s inception in 2010. For 39 years Dr. Erickson has directed and/or taught skill building pediatric hypnosis workshops at various hospitals, mental health programs, hypnosis societies, and various national professional conferences. Dr. Erickson has done research on the use of self-hypnosis by children with sickle cell anemia and on the perceptions of hypnosis and biofeedback among inner-city Hispanic children and their families. She received a NIMH Clinical Investigator Award for her study of Coping with Chronic illness in Children.

For 20 years, she was the Director of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Columbia University’s Children’s Hospital of New York Presbyterian. Dr. Erickson was a Curriculum Committee member that formulated the proposed curriculum requirements for fellowship training programs with the newly created Subspecialty Board of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Dr. Erickson developed a DBP fellowship training program at Columbia University’s Babies Hospital and other DBP residency training programs. Dr. Erickson held various leadership position with SDBP, including was a founding Executive Council member, Chair of Constitution Committee, and Program Director. SDBP gave her a 5 year Service Award as Director of their Annual Scientific Meetings and a second award on SDBP’s 20th anniversary for Developing and Directing the Clinical Hypnosis Workshops.