Dr. Neal Halfon, the founding director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, received the C. Anderson Aldrich Award in Child Development at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ national conference held in Chicago in September.
The award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to child development, was established in 1964 by the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Child Development. Halfon directs the Child and Family Health Leadership and Training Program in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and is a professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine UCLA; health policy and management in the school of public health, and public policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Halfon has been instrumental in advancing research, policy and systems innovations focused on the health development of children. He has developed a framework, known as Life Course Health Development, that provides a conceptual model for understanding the early origins of chronic diseases and the implications for health systems, communities and research. Halfon also led the development of the 3.0 Health System Transformation Framework to transform the current national health care system into one that is more effective at optimizing the health of the entire population and reducing expenditures and health disparities.
