Project Director:

Marie  C.  McCormick, M.D., ScD.
Sumner and Esther Feldberg
Professor of Maternal and Child Health
Department of Society, Human Development and Health
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115-6028

About our Training Grant: 

Creating the leaders for the coming century in MCH requires specific knowledge and skills, both initially and on an ongoing basis.  Among these are a solid knowledge about the unique problems of the MCH population and the programs and policies designed to address these problems, excellent analytic skills in both quantitative and problem-solving activities, demonstrated ability to provide service activities and/or conduct research, advanced leadership experiences such as in strategic planning, knowledge and skills in the emerging public problems, and opportunities to engage in the new content areas of public health.  These are ambitious tasks, requiring training in both traditional areas of public health (e.g. epidemiology, biostatistics, causes of mortality and needs assessment), and emerging areas such as contextual influences on disease, hierarchical and spatial statistics, genomics and the like.  It is the gap between conventional public health training and this leadership training that the MCH Concentration at the Harvard School of Public Health is exceedingly well placed to address.

The purpose of this project is to provide training at the masters and doctoral level for those wishing to become leaders in MCH, to create and disseminate new knowledge, to offer continuing education to those in the field and to advocate for children and their families.  Health indicators indicate that the U.S. families failed to meet Healthy People goals for 2000, suggesting the need for additional personnel to deal with these issues. The training is provided through formal degree programs, ongoing seminars, technical assistance by the faculty and research into issues of significance for MCH.  Evaluation is multifaceted, including oversight by the school, student evaluations, success in obtaining external funding and in publication, and surveys of alumni/ae.