Joshua Sparrow

Joshua D. Sparrow, MD, DFAACAP is the Executive Director of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center in the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he also holds an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry. He is a co-principal investigator for the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (Office of Head Start, Office of Child Care, ACF, HHS), and is part-time associate professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In 2010 he was appointed to the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Head Start Research and Evaluation Committee. He serves on the American Pediatric Association’s Child Poverty Task Force, and on the American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) Head Start Collaborative Advisory Council.

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At the Brazelton Touchpoints Center, Dr. Sparrow's work has focused on cultural adaptations of family support programs, organizational professional development, cross-sector collaboration, and aligning systems of care with community strengths and priorities. For the past 15 years, he has been deeply involved in shared learning and problem-solving projects that he has termed “collaborative consultations,” for example with the Harlem Children’s Zone and other place-based initiatives, and with American Indian/Alaskan Native Early Head Start/Head Start Programs, among many other organizations and communities around the country and internationally. He also is collaborating with the Center for the Study of Social Policy on an ambitious project to transform public and policymaker understanding of evidence, and to increase its relevance to the ever more complex challenges of raising children to their full potential across diverse contexts.