Two CHS Faculty Honored for Ongoing Work with Maternal and Child Health Project.

Gene Declercq and Candice Belanoff are part of a team recognized by the National Coalition for Excellence in MCH Epidemiology for improving public health practice through effective use of data, epidemiology and applied research.

In September, Declercq and Belanoff will receive the “2014 Effective Practice—State Level Award” at the CityMatCH Leadership and MCH Epidemiology Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. The award honors their work with the Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal Data System (PELL) project, a collaboration of BUSPH, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Declercq, a professor of community health sciences, is a PELL co-founder, and Belanoff, an assistant professor of community health sciences, has worked on the project for the past five years. PELL’s extensive data system links a core dataset of birth and fetal death files, hospital discharge records, and maternal delivery records with program and state agency records from Early Intervention, Birth Defects, WIC, Newborn Hearing Screening, Substance Abuse Services, and Assisted Reproductive Technology, and others.

CityMatCH is a national membership organization of city and county health departments’ maternal and child health (MCH) programs and leaders representing urban communities in the United States. The mission of CityMatCH is to strengthen public health leaders and organizations to promote equity and improve the health of urban women, families, and communities.