Maureen Black, Ph.D.

Maureen McEvoy Black greatly contributed to the advancement of the fields of child development and nutrition through her work as a pediatric psychologist, professor, and researcher. Her work centered on intervention research related to children’s nutrition, health, and development conducted in low-income communities in Baltimore and developing countries.

Black was born in 1945 in Tacoma, Washington, and spent most of her childhood in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Following her undergraduate degree in mathematics at Pennsylvania State University (1967), she worked as a systems analyst for IBM in New York, Philadelphia, London, and Los Angeles. She obtained an MA from the University of Southern California (1973) and a Ph.D. in psychology from Emory University in Atlanta (1977).

Black lived in Bangladesh and Peru for several years, working with undernourished children, before moving to Maryland, where she joined the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Black was the John A. Scholl MD and Mary Louise Scholl MD Endowed Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (2003-2021), later becoming Professor Emeritus. She founded and directed the Growth and Nutrition Clinic, a multidisciplinary clinic that provides services to children with poor growth and feeding problems from throughout the state.

In 1999, Black became an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and in 2001, an adjunct professor for International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In addition to providing clinical services through the Growth and Nutrition Clinic, she oversaw post-doctoral training in nutrition and psychology, mentored junior faculty, conducted research related to children’s growth and development, and helped organize WIMS (Women in Medicine and Science).

Black’s long-standing interest in child development began with a fellowship in developmental disabilities at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. She became a principal investigator for Children’s HealthWatch, a multi-site initiative among Growth and Nutrition Clinics in seven cities that monitors the well-being of young children in low-income communities. She successfully attracted federal funding from NIH, USDA, and several national foundations to conduct intervention trials to promote growth and development among undernourished children, to build parenting skills among adolescent mothers, to follow children who have been prenatally exposed to drugs, and to prevent obesity among toddlers and adolescents.

She wrote extensively on early childhood development, having published over 400 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and co-authored several papers published in The Lancet (2007, 2011, and 2017), including leading the first paper of the 2017 Lancet series, Advancing Early Childhood Development: from Science to Scale. Black also worked as an associate editor of Pediatric Obesity and served on several editorial boards for other health journals.

Black was the president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association, chair of the Maryland WIC Advisory Committee, chair of the Child Health Foundation, a founding member of the Global Child Development Group, and has served on committees for several professional societies, UNICEF, WHO, and the Institute of Medicine.

Black married Dr. Robert E. Black, chair of the Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They have two daughters: Shaunti Taylor of Columbia, MD, and Maresa Weems of Newton, MA.

“The foundations of adult health, well-being, economic capability, and social responsibility are formed during childhood.” - Maureen Black, The Baltimore Sun (2016)