Let’s Talk: A Conversation on “What Works” for Women

WICC2025 Presentation by Dr Stephanie S. Covington PhD, LCSW and Dr Nena Messina PhD (WICC2025-PID104)

Authors

Dr. Stephanie S. Covington PhD, LCSW

Co-Director, Center for Gender & Justice, United States

Dr. Stephanie S. Covington is an internationally recognized clinician, author, organizational consultant, and lecturer.

She is a pioneer in the fields of addiction, trauma, and recovery. She has developed an innovative, gender-responsive, and trauma-informed approach that results in effective services in public, private, and institutional settings. Her presentations, staff development seminars, and technical assistance focus on systems change and developing caring, compassionate, and empowering therapeutic environments. They provide professionals an opportunity to learn new skills for dealing with personal, institutional, and societal changes and are always in demand nationally and internationally.

Dr. Covington was a workshop chair for the Women’s Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) published by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and served on the Advisory Council for Women’s Services for SAMHSA. She also is a former chair of the Women's Committee of the International Council on Alcoholism and Addiction. Her clients include the Betty Ford Treatment Center, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment in Washington, D.C., and numerous others. She has conducted seminars for behavioral health professionals, community organizations, and criminal justice professionals in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Europe, Africa, Iceland, Brazil, and New Zealand.

For thirty years, she has also provided training and consulting to help institutions and programs in the criminal justice system develop effective gender-responsive and trauma-informed services. These include the U. S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, the National Institute of Corrections, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; many other state and local jurisdictions; the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; the Ministries of Justice in England, Scotland, and Switzerland; and the Correctional Service of Canada. She was the featured consultant and therapist on the Oprah Winfrey Network docu-reality show entitled Breaking Down the Bars. She also co-authored a three-year research project, Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders, for the National Institute of Corrections. This publication received the University of Cincinnati Award for its outstanding contribution to corrections in the U.S. and Canada. Based in Del Mar, California, Dr. Covington is co-director of the Institute for Relational Development and the Center for Gender & Justice, which seeks to expand gender-responsive policies and practices for individuals under criminal justice supervision.

Educated at Columbia University and the Union Institute, Dr. Covington has served on the faculties of the University of Southern California, San Diego State University, and the California School of Professional Psychology. She is a board-certified Diplomate of the National Association of Social Workers and a member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. She also belongs to the International Corrections and Prisons Association, the Western Society of Criminology, and the Association of Justice-Involved Females and Organizations.

Dr. Covington has published extensively, including twelve gender-responsive, trauma-informed treatment curricula. She wrote the first comprehensive manualized treatment program for substance use disorder treatment. She also has published trauma-focused training materials for staff development and organizational change. Her newest publications are Hidden Healers: The Unexpected Ways Women in Prison Help Each Other Survive and the updated thirtieth-anniversary edition of the best-selling book A Woman’s Way through the Twelve Steps.

Dr Nena Messina

CEO, Envisioning Justice Solutions, Inc., USA

Nena P. Messina, Ph.D., is a research Criminologist and the CEO of Envisioning Justice Solutions, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to determining the programs, policies, and services needed to increase successful recovery of criminal justice-involved populations (e.g., men/boys, women/girls, transgender and gender non-conforming populations). She is retired from the Criminal Justice Research Group at the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs and has been involved in criminal justice research for over 25 years. Dr. Messina’s areas of expertise include the specialized treatment needs of justice-involved populations and the association between crime, mental health, and substance use. Her research often explores the onset of criminal behavior and its association with adverse childhood events (ACES). Dr. Messina was appointed as a Special Consultant to act as a Governor’s Rehabilitation Strike Team Member to create a strategic plan to reform the California prison system in response to Legislative bill AB 900 - The Public Safety & Offender Rehabilitation Services Act of 2007. Dr. Messina has a successful history as the Principal Investigator of several NIDA and NIJ-funded grants and California state contracts assessing the effectiveness of trauma-informed and gender-responsive treatment for incarcerated populations. Dr. Messina has collaborated on numerous publications on the psychosocial correlates of substance use treatment outcomes and has contributed a great deal to the understanding of co-occurring disorders, trauma and abuse, and treatment responsivity for special populations. Dr. Messina has been at the forefront of innovative research determining evidence-based services needed to rebuild the lives of those involved in the justice system.

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