Maternal and Child Health Center of Excellence
The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Center of Excellence provides academic, research, and service-learning opportunities to public health students, researchers, and practitioners whose mission is to improve the lives of mothers, children, and families.
Kresge Building 6th-floor
677 Huntington Ave., Boston MA 02115
Welcome to the MCH Center of Excellence!
Empowering and equipping future leaders in maternal and child health to make a lasting impact.
As one of just 13 Centers of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health (MCH) in the U.S., funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Harvard draws on its tradition of excellence to train future leaders in the field.
Housed within the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, our Center provides academic, research, and service-learning opportunities to public health students, researchers, and practitioners whose mission is to improve the lives of mothers, children, and families.
Our Center offers an interdisciplinary concentration in maternal and child health, various research and practice projects through our competitive MCH Leadership Lab, a CDC course in program evaluation, and more!
Activities
Students have the opportunity to complete an interdisciplinary concentration in Maternal and Child Health (MCH), equipping them with the knowledge base for leadership.
Our Center offers a competitive fellowship opportunity to current Harvard T.H. Chan students pursuing the MCH concentration. All concentrators are encouraged to apply. This opportunity is open to domestic and international students.
The Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) disseminates the best evidence in maternal health to those who need it most. MHTF provides a hub for students, faculty, researchers, clinicians, and other practitioners to produce and access the most current, reliable MCH studies available.
The Birth Beyond Bars Study is the first study outside of a prison nursery setting to follow children who were exposed to their mother’s incarceration in utero during a critical period for child development, from birth to age three, with the goal of understanding what children and their families experience and what impact those experiences have on their health and wellbeing to create better policies and programs for these families.
We host at least one symposium biannually on a maternal and child health topic. Symposia are open to the wider community.
Collaboration
Our Center offers a competitive fellowship opportunity to current students pursuing the MCH concentration. All concentrators are encouraged to apply.
The Justice-Involved Women and Children (JIWC) is a group of formerly or currently HRSA-funded faculty, staff and students working on research, policy, training issues and topics at the intersection of incarceration and MCH, including Harvard University, University of Minnesota, Emory University, University of Illinois Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and University of North Carolina. More information can be found at this link.
Our Center has partnered with Jackson State University, the Mississippi Health Department, and several community organizations to secure NIH funding for the creation of a Mississippi Delta Center of Excellence in Maternal Health (1 U54HD113238-01). The goal of the Center is to address preventable maternal mortality, decrease maternal morbidity, and promote maternal health equity in partnership with the Mississippi Delta community.
The PIs include Dr. Mary Shaw (Jackson State U), Dr. Henning Tiemeier (Harvard CoE), and Beryl Polk (Mississippi Department of Health).
About the Center
The Maternal and Child Health Center of Excellence works with numerous organizations and institutions throughout the U.S. to support current leaders in the field.