February 18, 2010
Milton Kotelchuck. Download image.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A pioneer in the design and direction of pregnancy-to-early-life public health programs, Milton Kotelchuck, Ph.D., will present a free lecture at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at noon Wednesday, Feb. 24 in the Hill University Center Alumni Auditorium, 1400 University Blvd.
Hosted by the UAB's School of Public Health, the talk will be the third Ann Dial McMillan Endowed Lectureship in Family and Child Health. For more information call 934-7799.
Kotelchuck's lecture, titled "Maternal and Child Health Life Course Perspective: New Research, Practice and Policy Solutions to Enduring Problems for Children, Women and Families," will examine prenatal exposures and early life experiences affecting birth outcomes and adult health. He also will address how pregnancy and the failure to provide appropriate post-partum care affect women's health, as well as the ways new public health life-course designs consider data and policy solutions.
A professor of community health sciences, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University's School of Public Health, Kotelchuck developed the widely used Adequacy of Prenatal Care Utilization (APNCU) Index, which combines the month of the first prenatal visits with the number of visits recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, adjusted for the length of the pregnancy. Kotelchuck also helped create the Massachusetts Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal (PELL) system, which enables researchers to use data from multiple sources to examine the effects of prenatal exposures on subsequent maternal and child development.
Kotelchuck, chair emeritus of the Department of Maternal and Child Health at Boston University, is chair of the Technical Expert Panel on Evaluation of Healthy Start at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. He is a past senior advisor on child-health policy for the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kotelchuck also is a senior and founding editor of the Maternal and Child Health Journal.
The McMillan Lectureship was established by the School of Public Health in 2007 in honor of Ann Dial McMillan, wife of former Alabama Lt. Gov. George McMillan Jr. It is a tribute to her enthusiastic support of the School of Public Health's programs, particularly contributions to childhood immunizations and health-care advances within the state. Her devotion also recognizes her father, who lost both parents to tuberculosis when he was a child.
About the UAB School of Public Health
The UAB School of Public Health is a community of scholars and professionals working and teaching in varied arenas of public health with the goal of fostering research and best practices crucial to the health of the United States and its peoples. The school offers more than 20 areas of study and manages dozens of research and community-service centers.