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    Dr. Lori Rappaport

    Dr. Lori Rappaport

    Education and Training:

    Dr. Lori Rappaport received her Masters and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California. During that time Dr. Rappaport worked as a counselor at LA Child Guidance Clinic, as an intern in oncology at LA Children’s and as the Project Director at UCLA Child Amputee Prosthetics Project where she helped to gather a longitudinal base of information on children with limb differences and their families. Dr. Rappaport was a Child and Pediatric Fellow at Harvard Medical School, where she developed the Growing Up Great! Parenting Program and provided support services to pediatric Bone Marrow transplant patients at Dana Farber Cancer Center. Dr. Rappaport also completed a Family Medicine Fellowship at Harbor-UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles while also working in the pediatric oncology department. Dr. Rappaport has worked at several Children’s Hospitals including Boston, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego.

    Teaching and Community Education:

    Dr. Rappaport enjoys teaching students and other professionals, as well as parents. She has taught at the University level in both undergraduate (USC) and graduate programs (Chapman University), as well as in the hospitals to medical residents and grand rounds. She has lectured at a variety of professional conferences ranging from critical care nurses to Girl Scout leaders to a national forum on school violence. Dr. Rappaport strongly believes in the power of preventative education and is a regular guest speaker for Scripps Hospital Parent Connection, Rady Children’s, Scripps Mother of Multiples Club, and Fusions Academy, as well as numerous public and private schools and community organizations throughout San Diego County.

    Clinical Work

    Dr. Rappaport opened her private practice in Carmel Valley/Del Mar in the Hacienda Building, while working at Rady Children’s Oncology in 1995. After the birth of her 4th child, Dr. Rappaport left Rady’s to focus on her family, and kept her practice at a minimum for many years. During that time, she volunteered with the Girl Scouts of San Diego, as a leader for two troops, taking her girls from kindergarten to high school senior Gold Award recipients. As her children grew, Dr. Rappaport expanded her services, still maintaining her Hacienda Building location.

    Dr. Rappaport founded the San Diego ADHD Center for Success with her partner, Dr. Lewis Ribner, in 1999. Both were dedicated to educating parents and teachers about the impact of ADHD on the functioning of children and adolescents, improving support services for them, and removing barriers to success. In the process of working with children and adolescents, they recognized a large group of adults who experienced similar issues as children and despite their success, continued to struggle with some specific issues related to attention and efficiency related to work and managing their families. Many of these adults were seeking support for their children and recognizing the parallel to their own childhood experiences. This led to the development of a Modified Adult Evaluation, unique to the center, which provides necessary information to these adults to improve their quality of life in an efficient and cost effective way. In 2018, Dr. Ribner retired, and Dr. Rappaport has continued the mission of the center.

    Dr. Rappaport added a therapy dog to her practice in 2011. Charlie, less a dog and more human, is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who “rescued” her and has been a beloved member of the office staff ever since he first walked into the waiting room. Over her more than 30 year career, Dr. Rappaport has focused on many issues facing children and adolescents and has helped many parents support their children through challenging times.

    Volunteer Work

    Dr. Rappaport’s background in Oncology quickly led her to volunteer to be a facilitator for Vital Options, a support group for young adults living with cancer. She continued with this group for several years while living in Los Angeles until moving to San Diego, then offering her services to the Jenna Druck Center. For over 17 years, Dr. Rappaport was the Child Bereavement Specialist with the Jenna Druck Center and the Families Helping Families program, which supported bereaved families around the country. Dr. Rappaport also served on their Board of Directors. During that same time period, she was also an advisor to the Young Women’s™ Leadership Program (YWL), which held 2 yearly Spirit of Leadership Conferences, one for middle school and the other for high school girls, as well as quarterly workshops aimed at personal growth for young women. On behalf of the Jenna Druck Center, Dr. Rappaport provided direct support to bereaved parents and siblings, while also providing grief education in the schools, hospitals and to first responders following the death of a child, parent, teacher or natural disaster or trauma such as the California wildfires or school shootings. Dr. Rappaport provided services in New York City directly to survivors, family members, first responders and teachers following 9-11 and through the first anniversary of the tragedy in collaboration with the Jenna Druck Center and their local Children’s Hospital.

    Dr. Rappaport has been a volunteer with the Girl Scouts of San Diego Council for more than 25 years. She represented San Diego Council as a National Delegate to the 2005 Girl Scout National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, and was a member of the Board of Directors from 2007-2013. She participated on the Healthy Girls, Healthy Lives initiative, which was committed to bringing state of the art programs and speakers to adults in our community to better assist them in helping to shape the lives of the girls they work with. She worked with a group of other professionals and staff to increase support for girls with disabilities within Girl Scouts. She also provides education for staff and leaders in a variety of areas of growth and development in girls and supports the council when they experience a loss or trauma in the community. Dr. Rappaport is a regular presenter at the annual Leading the Way volunteer celebration and education conference. In addition, Dr. Rappaport was a troop leader, seeing her first troop go from kindergarten to Ambassador Scouts to Gold Awardees to Adult Girl Scouts in 2010, and her second troop making that same transition in 2013.

    Dr. Rappaport also volunteers her time as a member of the Board of Directors for The Elizabeth Hospice and Center for Compassionate Care, which took over the Jenna Druck Center in 2014 and has dedicated its efforts in expanding bereavement services to children and adolescents throughout San Diego County. Dr. Rappaport is also honored to serve as a Board Member for the Chelsea’s Light Foundation (CLF), which is dedicated to protecting the innocence and joy of childhood by engaging communities to unite and inspire positive change. It is because of their efforts that California now has the strongest laws in the Country protecting our 9.3 million California children from known violent predators, and they are expanding to other states. It is also their mission to recognize and honor phenomenal young changemakers with college scholarships.

    ADHD Evaluation and Treatment

    Dr. Rappaport is the Director and Co-Founder of the ADHD Center for Success, which is committed to providing children, adolescents and adults and their families, the most current and effective evaluation and treatment programs for Attention Disorders. Ongoing support and education, collaboration with schools, and healthcare providers is a key component of our program. Through the Center, Dr. Rappaport provides comprehensive ADHD evaluations, follow-up testing to evaluate medication effectiveness, Individual and Family Counseling, Parent Education, School Consultation, and 504/IEP Support and Assistance.

    The ADHD Center has developed a unique Modified Adult Evaluation, specifically focusing on identifying adults never diagnosed who have often wondered if they have ADHD. Most of these individuals are bright, passionate and hard working but struggle to focus and maintain productivity, working hard and yet often inefficient in their efforts. The ADHD Center has designed a cost effective evaluation to help these individuals definitively identify whether they have an underlying neurological attention deficit and how best to treat it.