About Our SpeakerKotelchuck graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, then earned a master’s in clinical psychology, doctorate in personality and developmental psychology and master’s of public heath in maternal and child health and epidemiology from Harvard University. He is founding and now senior editor of the Maternal and Child Health Journal.Among his professional experience, he was assistant professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, research director of the Family Development Study at Children’s Hospital MedicalCenter in Boston and director of the Division of Health Statistics and Research for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
He has extensive experience evaluating public health programs to improve birth outcomes and child health status. His research interests include examination of the adequacy and content of prenatal and internatal care, racial disparities in birth outcomes, maternal morbidity, immigrant health, child health services, child nutrition and health data policy. He developed the widely used Adequacy of Prenatal Care Utilization Index. His current research interests focus on maternal and child health life course models and the creation and utilization of the Massachusetts Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal, or PELL, data system.
Kotelchuck has written extensively on racial disparities in perinatal and child health services and serves on numerous committees to improve such services. He has been a member of theMassachusetts and North Carolina governor’s commissions on thereduction of infant mortality and served as senior advisor on child health policy for the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. He now serves as chair of the Technical Expert Panel on Evaluation of Healthy Start.
He is committed to educating future leaders of the maternal and child health field and has been praised by his academic colleagues for challenging his students and helping them with long-term research relationships. He serves as co-chair of the March of Dimes Data Center Advisory Committee and is a board member of the Center for Social Disparities in Health, Brookline Friends of Public Health and Alliance for Healthy Tomorrow, among his numerous committee and consultant assignments.
From 2003-2008, Dr. Kotelchuck served as chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. He also served as principal investigator of the Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal (PELL) Database, a project that utilizes and enhances a broad range of existing public health databases to examine the impact of pregnancy and birth experiences on subsequent maternal and child health. He is also the founding and senior editor of the Maternal and Child Health Journal.
He has received many awards and honors, including the Excellence in Teaching Awards three times from the Boston University School of Public Health and the Ed Ehlinger Award for Contributions to Urban Maternal and Child Health.
