Deborah A. Frank, MD

Dr. Deborah A. Frank MD has established and led three successful multidisciplinary teams focused on diverse urban families and their children. One team is clinical - the Grow Clinic which has served underweight young children since 1984 until her retirement from clinical care in 2019... The other two teams are research focused. The most relevant to the current proposal was founded in 1998 - Children’s HealthWatch (www.childrenshealthwatch.org) is a multidisciplinary action research multisite program which measures the impact of material hardships and program participation upon the well-being of very young children and their families living in poverty. The second longitudinal research program which Dr. Frank founded is DAO65320 from NIDA, a twenty-five year longitudinal cohort study of impoverished African-American youth with and without intrauterine cocaine exposure.