Donna Saunders, Ph.D., LCPC

Dr. Saunders is a clinical psychologist and pastoral counselor who has provided professional services to disadvantaged youth and their families, and the agencies who serve them for over 20 years.  Her approach to youth in her clinical practice, holistic in nature, focuses on building in them the needed competencies for lasting success in an ever-changing and the challenging world.  The themed goal for each youth is that he/she develop the 'different sides of me' while providing for the agencies that serve them the needed skills to ensure a level playing field for these youth so that success is a reality for all, irrespective of socio-economic status.   

As ordained minister, Dr. Saunders along with her very capable colleagues, have for over 25 years provided training, clinical and program services, as well as health education to the faith community.  The underlying conviction that has driven her service efforts toward this historical agency and resource in the community is that faith and faith community provide a key component to solving problems of health inequity, injustice, and socio-economic disparity in our world.  As research has shown, with respectful and sensible support, skills building, and mutually respectful community-based partnershp, the faith community can be (and is a rich soil) for the execution of public health prevention and social change.

Consistent with her convictions regarding the potential for faith community to play a key role in contributing solutions to 21st century challenges to our world, Dr. Saunders has concentrated her attention in research on tracking the relationship between spirituality, health and social change, and has spoken to a wide range of audiences on this broad topic. Audiences have included Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Wheaton College, George Mason University, the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Congress of National Black Churches.  Always prepared to interject the research findings on faith, health, and social change, she is frequently interviewed by local news networks and has been interviewed by such national networks as CNN to give her unique analysis of newsworthy matters affecting men, women, youth and our communities.  For lasting change for the better in our complex and, often difficult world, faith must be included in the conversation of 'how this will be done'.

Dr. Saunders is co-author of the four-volume reference work, The Faith Factor: A Review of Clinical Research on Spiritual Topics and contributing writer for the Templeton funded Validation of the Laws of Life. Dr. Saunders has served as consultant for the Family Research Council, Psychiatric Institute of Washington, Department of Health and Human Services, the American Association for Counseling and Development, and Howard University Graduate School of Education, to name a few, on the role of religion and spirituality in health and social change. Her clinical practice, training/educational efforts, and research all express her belief that the pathway to hope, healing, and health is the alignment with God’s will as an individual, a family, and a community.  That the health of a person, their community, and our world is only maximized when matters affecting the body, mind, and spirit are all addressed in all of these entities.