Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics

Director: Carol Weitzman, M.D.
Administrative Assistant: Gail Novey
Telephone: 203 785-7521
Fax: 203 737-1208

Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics (DBP) is a board-certified subspecialty of pediatrics that specializes in evaluating, counseling, and providing treatment for children, adolescents, and their families with a wide range of developmental and behavioral difficulties.

Yale Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics provides detailed evaluations and treatment for children with a wide range of concerns in our outpatient Developmental Medicine center and through inpatient and community consultations. 

Our clinical services currently include:

• Yale Developmental Medicine
• Mental Health Consultation to Lulac Head Start
• Mental Health Consultation to ACES, Whitney North, a high school for adolescents with the educational classification of Serious Emotional Disturbances.
• Consultation to Foundation School, a day school for students ages 3-21 with a variety of developmental needs, learning deficits, autism spectrum disorders and behavioral challenges
• Consultation to the Speech Academy, a speech and language-based academic program to students with a range of communication, sensory-motor, learning and social skill disabilities.
• Developmental consultation to children on the Pediatric Respiratory Care Unit, a six-bed intermediate care unit designed to accommodate the special medical and psychosocial needs of children with chronic respiratory failure.
• Developmental consultation to hospitalized children.
• Developmental & Behavioral at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital

Faculty and fellows in DBP are actively conducting research across a broad range of important areas including:

• Integrating mental health services into primary care
• The genetics of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
• Screening, diagnosis and treatment of children with ASD and other developmental disabilities
• Evaluation and treatment of maternal depression within primary care settings
• Identification of children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
• Abnormalities in brain connectivity in children with ASD
• The relationship between ASD and obesity

Yale DBP is also one of the DBP Research Network sites and is on the steering committee for this newly developed research network.

DBP members extensively participate in regional and national endeavors, all designed to strengthen protective factors and the life course for children and families.  A few examples include:

• Chair, CT Autism Diagnostic Standards Guidelines Task Force
• Editor, Autism Case Training Curriculum with the CDC and Maternal and Child Health Bureau
• Co-chair, United Way Success by Six Council
• Member of the Governor’s Task for Autism in CT
• Chair, New Haven Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Task Force

DBP continues to grow and expand the breadth of clinical services we provide, the scope of our research endeavors and the range of our advocacy activities.