Kyle Pruett, MD

Dr. Pruett has been a distinguished educator at the graduate, undergraduate and distance-learning level for three decades and has served the Child Study Center as Director of Medical and Undergraduate Studies. He is an international expert and forensic consultant on child, parental and family development, paternal involvement, children’s mental health, creativity and the effects of trauma, media and divorce on young and very young children. Founder of the Yale Conference on Fatherhood, and the Harris Professional Development Network for Training in Early Intervention and Research, he served as co-chair of the Child Custody Conflict Placement Committee of the Child Study Center and the Yale Law School. He is past President ofe Zero to Three: National Center of Infants, Toddlers and Families, and served on the Board of Trustees of Sesame Workshop, Yale Program for Humanities in Medicine, and The Alliance for Childhood. He is a regular consultant and contributor to ABC and CBS News, Newsweek Magazine, NPR, the New York Times and sits on the editorial boards of Medical Problems of the Performing Artist, Parents, and Child. Dr. Pruett served as principal investigator of the pioneering Longitudinal Study of Children of Primary Nurturing Fathers in Intact Families 1982-1998. He was co-principal investigator with Marsha Kline Pruett of Divorce in Legal Context: Outcomes for, and Perceptions by, Young Children of the Process of Divorce, 1998-2000. He conducted the first investigation of the effects of a collaborative divorce model on child outcomes, again teaming up with his wife, 2000-2002. His current research focuses on the Supporting Fatherhood Initiative, State of California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention. It is a major, 900+ family multi-site randomized clinical trial of a co-parenting-focused intervention designed to reduce abuse and neglect in a Latino and African American population of poor families by engaging fathers positively and early in the lives of their children. Findings have prompted California to change the training of their childwelfare workers, and an international replication is underway in Alberta, CA and London, UK