J. Kevin Nugent, Ph.D.

Email: kevin.nugent@childrens.harvard.edu

Dr. J. Kevin Nugent is the Founder and Director of the Brazelton Institute at Children's Hospital in Boston and is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pediatrics. He is also Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of Massachusettes at Amherst.

Dr. Nugent was educated in Ireland and received his doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Boston College. He has worked at the Children's Hospital in Boston since 1978, conducting research on newborn behavior and early parent-infant relations. Dr. Nugent is co-author with Dr. Brazelton, of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, third edition, published by Mac Keith Press, London and has been the director of training on the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale since 1978. He and his colleagues, Drs. Keefer, O'Brien, Johnson and Blanchard, developed the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system, formerly known as the CLNBAS. This observational set is intended for use by clinicians in pediatric and intervention settings, as a way of sensitizing parents to the competencies and individuality of their infants. It is comprised of 18 neurobehavioral observations and is based on an individualized, infant-focused, family-centered approach to working with infants and families in the early months of life.

Dr. Nugent's areas of research include the effects of a range of prenatal teratogens on neonatal and developmental outcome, the impact of melatonin on newborn behavior, the transition to parenthood and the role of fathers. He is involved in a study of the origins of temperament, with Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman. Dr. Nugent continues to conduct research in a variety of cultural settings. He is co-investigator with Professor Sheila Greene at Trinity College, Dublin, in a 20-year longitudinal study of child development in Ireland. Dr. Nugent is currently engaged in an examination of the effects of the NBO as a form of preventative intervention in both hospital and Early Intervention settings. Dr. Nugent is a senior editor of the two-volume series, "The Cultural Context of Infancy" and co-editor with Joao Gomes-Pedro, Berry Brazelton and Jerry Young, of "The Baby in the 21st Century" (2002). He is now editing a book on the NBAS with Dr. Brazelton and Bonnie Petrauskas, while he and his colleagues are working on a handbook for the NBO. Dr. Nugent is the editor of Ab Initio (www.abinitiointernational.com), the international newsletter of the Brazelton Institute.

< Back to the Faculty/Staff Directory