Faculty Profile: Peter Rockers.
Faculty Profile: Peter Rockers
Growing up with parents who were teachers, Peter Rockers, assistant professor of global health, has long believed that society has a collective responsibility to support and nurture children.
“The medical model often frames child development from a deficits perspective, but it is important that we begin to frame this issue with a perspec- tive that centers on nurturing children’s capabilities,” he says.
Director of the Global Health Program Design, Monitoring and Evaluation certificate at the School of Public Health, Rockers conducts research primarily focused on the design and evaluation of behavioral and health system interventions to improve early childhood development in low- and middle-income countries. He is co-principal investigator for a study in South Africa evaluating the impact of a comprehensive, at-home parent support intervention delivered by community health workers on children’s neurodevelopment, and works in Indonesia and Zambia evaluating the effectiveness of a home-based growth chart intervention that allows parents to track their child’s physical growth and respond with improved nutrition.
Rockers is also a member of the Boston University Faculty Alliance for Early Childhood Well-Being, a cross-disciplinary group of BU faculty members who are collaborating to launch the Institute of Early Childhood Well-Being. The institute began operations at the BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development in 2021, with the goal of pioneering new approaches for sustaining children’s health and well-being locally and globally.
“The growing global effort focused on child development has great poten- tial to positively impact millions of children whose creativity will benefit society in profound ways,” he says.