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Jack P. Shonkoff

Founding Director, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

Jack P. Shonkoff, MD, is a Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education; Founding Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University; and Chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Dr. Shonkoff is a former Board Member of ZERO TO THREE.

Contributions to the Field

Dr. Shonkoff, a pediatrician, is an expert on early childhood research, service delivery, and social policy. He was Principal Investigator of the Early Intervention Collaborative Study, Co-Editor of the classic “Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention, Chair of the Board on Children,” Youth, and Families of the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, and Chair of the IOM/NRC Committee that produced the landmark report entitled “From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development.” Dr. Shonkoff has been very influential in negotiating the boundaries among scholarship, policy, and practice focused on young children and their families. Prior to assuming his current position, he was the Samuel F. and Rose B. Gingold Professor of Human Development and Social Policy and Dean of The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Affiliations

ZERO TO THREE Board Member Emeritus; Graduate ZERO TO THREE Fellow; The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies; Society for Research in Child Development; American Academy of Pediatrics.

Awards/Honors/Recognition/Books Published

Dr. Shonkoff has been honored numerous times for his contributions to the field, with such distinctions as the C. Anderson Aldrich Award in Child Development from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children from the Society for Research in Child Development, and elected membership to the Institute of Medicine. He has authored more than 130 publications, including 9 books, and served on the editorial board of a number of scholarly journals, including Child Development and Infant Mental Health Journal. Dr. Shonkoff has been a visiting professor and delivered named lectureships at 29 universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Israel, Australia, Japan, and China.