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Felton Earls is Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
A graduate of Howard University, he received a medical degree in 1967
and then pursued postgraduate training in neurophysiology at the University
of Wisconsin, pediatrics at New York Medical College, adult psychiatry
at the Massachusetts General Hospital, public health at the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and child psychiatry at the Hospital
for Sick Children in London. He joined the faculty of Harvard Medical
School in 1974, became the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Child Psychiatry
and Director of the Division of Child Psychiatry at Washington University
in St. Louis in 1981 and returned to Harvard in 1989.
His principal research activity involves a large-scale epidemiological
project examining the causes and consequences of children's exposure
to community and family violence. This project is situated in the city
of Chicago where a team of researchers is studying the physical health,
educational and occupational achievement, and social relationships of
children from birth to adulthood. Detailed attention is given to the
social and physical characteristics of the neighborhoods in which they
live and the schools they attend. The analytical challenges confronted
in this work require the capacity to examine complex interactions between
individual differences in personality and experiences with environmental
contingencies. The project represents one of the largest and most comprehensive
studies of child and youth development ever undertaken.
Earls and his colleagues are now turning their attention to the psychosocial
impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on children. New studies are beginning
in two locations in Tanzania to assess and monitor the health of orphaned
children. Using methods developed for the Chicago study, an analysis
of the role of community attitudes and perceptions about the disease
and its impact on children is underway. The work is aimed at helping
to devise more effective community-based interventions to support the
well-being of children in the context of this raging epidemic, and by
doing so to prevent institutionalization, homelessness, and traumatic
experiences for this group. All of the research is conceived from the
perspectives of child rights and the health promotion.
Earls is on the Board of Directors of Physicians for Human Rights and
is a member of the Committee for Human Rights at the National Academy
of Sciences. He is a member Alpha Omega Alpha, the Institute of Medicine
of the National Academies of Science, and a Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
Representative Publications:
Sampson R, Raudenbush SW, and Earls F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent
crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277:918-924.
Selner O'Hagan MB, Kindlon DJ, Buka SL, Raudenbush SW and Earls F. (1998).
Assessing exposure to violence in urban youth. J. Child Psychol. Psychiat.
39: 215-224.
Earls F. and Carlson M. (2001). The social ecology of child health and
well-being. Annual Rev. Pub. Health, 22: 143-66.
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