Ashley Judd to Speak at APA Annual Meeting

Known for her roles in “De-Lovely,” “Ruby in Paradise,” and “Double Jeopardy,” actress, writer, and humanitarian Ashley Judd, M.P.A., will be a plenary speaker at the 2023 APA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Judd has also gained worldwide acclaim as an avid advocate of human rights, with a focus on gender equality and public health. Since 2004 she has worked with numerous NGOs and traveled the world in support of public health efforts related to maternal health, child survival, HIV prevention, and malaria prevention and treatment.

She currently serves as a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations (UN) Population Fund, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency. She is also the chair of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project: Curbing Abuse, Expanding Freedom; a Global Ambassador for both Population Services International and Polaris Project; and a member of the leadership council of the International Center for Research on Women.

Judd earned her master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Muhammad Ali Kentucky Humanitarian Award. Her undergraduate alma mater, the University of Kentucky, established the Ashley T. Judd Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in the Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women.

She was also featured on the cover of TIME Magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year issue, which honored the thousands of individuals across the world who spoke out about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault, dubbed “The Silence Breakers.”

Judd has written about her family experiences with mental illness. In August 2022, she penned a guest essay in the New York Times about her family’s effort to keep police reports related to the suicide of her mother, Naomi Judd, private. Naomi Judd was a well-respected musician who dealt with mental illness for much of her life.

Tennessee law allows police reports from closed investigations, including family interviews, to be made public. “Naomi lost a long battle against an unrelenting foe that in the end was too powerful to be defeated,” Ashley Judd wrote. “I could not help her. I can, however, do something about how she is remembered.”

She wrote that she intends to make the invasion of privacy following an individual’s death by suicide “a personal as well as a legal cause.” She also called for a reformation of law enforcement procedures related to such cases. “Though I acknowledge the need for law enforcement to investigate a sudden violent death by suicide, there is absolutely no compelling public interest in the case of my mother to justify releasing the videos, images, and family interviews that were done in the course of that investigation.”

Last August, Naomi Judd’s family filed for injunctive relief in Williamson County, Tenn., to keep the police records related to her death private. Last December, the Associated Press reported that the family had filed a notice to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit, due in part to the fact that journalists who requested the police records were not requesting photographs or body cam footage. The notice also said a Tennessee state lawmaker is introducing legislation to make death investigation records private when the death is not the result of a crime.

“I hope that leaders in Washington and in state capitals will provide some basic protections for those involved in the police response to mental health emergencies,” Ashley Judd wrote in her essay, adding that her mother “should be remembered for how she lived, which was with goofy humor, glory onstage, and unfailing kindness off it—not for the private details of how she suffered when she died.” ■