1. Brief Introduction

The Department of Maternal and Child Health is jointly established by the School of Public Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and the Ministry of Education-Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children's Environmental Health, sharing research resources and platforms. The department has built a number of cohorts, including but not limited to the Shanghai Birth Cohort, the 1000 Day Initiative, Xinhua Autism Registration Database, Maternal Sleep Health Birth Cohort in Twin Pregnancies, Infant Sleep Birth Cohort Study, the Child and Adolescent Behavior and Psychological Cohort, etc.

Under the leadership of department chair Professor Jun Zhang, we have formed an interdisciplinary team composed of faculty members with diverse research backgrounds, namely, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, epidemiology and biostatistics, developmental neuropsychology, and health management. The group currently has five professors, five associate professors, four lecturers/assistant professors, and one administrative assistant. Our main research fields include: pregnancy & reproductive Health, early child development, and adolescent physical and mental health. In the past five years, the Department has obtained 54 grants with a total amount of 66.62 million RMB, and published 304 peer reviewed scientific papers, of which 159 were within the Journal Citation Report Quartile 1 (JCR Q1).

2. The Mission Statement

Our mission is to improve the health of mother and children. In particular, we:

(1) focus on the major national needs in the field of maternal and child health in 5-10 years;

(2) promote safe delivery, reproductive health, and healthy pregnancy;

(3) embrace early child development rather than child growth only;

(4) address both physical health and mental health issues;

(5) expand research focus from maternal and child health to life course health; and

(6) translate research evidence into public health and clinical