November 29, 2019 — Dr. Bernadette J. Madrid, a Clinical Associate Professor and graduate of the UP College of Medicine, Fellow of the Philippine Pediatrics Society, Attending Pediatrician of Philippine General Hospital’s Department of Pediatrics, and Director of the Child Protection Unit (CPU) of the UP PGH, was one of the recipients of the Filipino Women’s Network (FWN) 2019 Most Influential Filipina Women in the World Award – Pioneers and Founders Category.
The award honors Filipinas who are instrumental in changing the face of leadership in their respective local communities and in their adopted countries. It is the FWN’s strategy to execute its mission of having a Filipina woman leader in every sector of the global economy. It is a conglomeration of outstanding Filipinas living in 31 countries.
Dr. Madrid is Executive Director of the Child Protection Unit Network, Inc, a nongovernment organization that supports the training of child protection professionals and the development of child protection units in the Philippines.
She is greatly instrumental in the establishment of the PGH CPU, in capacitating and increasing the number of trained child protection specialists and multi-disciplinary CPUs in the Philippines, and integrating their work all over the country for a comprehensive approach in facing the challenges of child abuse and neglect everyday.
Through her researches, training, and advocacy work on protecting children’s rights, she testified in the Senate and Congressional hearings on child welfare legislations as well as in the Supreme Court Committee on Revision of the Rules of Court on the video testimony of children. She is actively involved in the incorporation of child abuse prevention in the undergraduate and graduate medical curriculum.
Dr. Madrid joins “an esteemed group of distinguished Filipina women worldwide who are advocating with FWN in its mission to increase the power and influence of Filipina women as leaders and policymakers on economic equity, social justice, and women’s rights in the private and public sectors.”
Dr. Madrid has published several articles on domestic violence and child abuse and neglect. She has been a resource person and lecturer for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific as well as UNICEF on Child Sexual Abuse and Child Sexual Exploitation.
She has chaired previous regional consultations by the World Health Organization on the WHO World Report on Violence and Health and the Health Sector Response to Sexual Violence. She is a member of the Executive Council of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and Chair of the Asian Forum. With reports from www.who.int
