AEC Fellows: David Olds

David Olds University of Colorado Health Sciences Center website Email: olds.david@tchden.org Phone: 303-864-5205 Fax: 303-864-5236

David Olds is Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Preventive Medicine, and Nursing at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where he directs the Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health.  He has devoted his career to investigating methods of preventing health and developmental problems in children and parents from low-income families.  The primary focus of his work has been on developing and testing in a series of randomized controlled trials a program of prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses for socially disadvantaged mothers bearing first children, known today as the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP).  The NFP has been found to improve women’s prenatal health; increase the spacing among subsequent births; reduce child abuse, neglect, and injuries; improve children’s school readiness; and reduce adolescent crime and substance use.  Professor Olds and his team are conducting longitudinal follow-ups of each of the randomized trials of this program to examine its long term effects on maternal and child health and development.  Since 1996, his team has been helping new communities develop the NFP outside of research settings, with a focus on faithfully implementing the model tested in the scientifically controlled studies.  Today, the program is operating in over 270 counties nationally, serving 20,000 families per year.  As the program is disseminated throughout the United States, Professor Olds’s team is now conducting research with local communities to improve the NFP model.  In recent years, Olds has developed collaborations with investigators from other countries who are adapting and testing the program in international contexts.  A member of the American Pediatrics Society, the Society for Prevention Research, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology, Professor Olds has received numerous awards for his work, including the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health, the Lela Rowland Prevention Award from the National Mental Health Association, a Senior Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Brooke Visiting Professorship in Epidemiology from the Royal Society of Medicine.  Professor Olds obtained his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. from Cornell.

 

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