James Comer’s creation of the School Development Program has had a profound effect on thousands of students from schools in more than 20 different states 13,14.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The program created through the collaboration between Comer, the Yale Child Study Center, and the New Haven schools became known as the School Development Program (SDP). Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Education, the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, the John Hope Franklin Award, and most recently, the University of Louisville 2007 Grawemeyer Award for Education as well as forty-seven honorary degrees. Over the past nearly 50 years numerous schools have used SDP similarly to close the achievement gap. Comer has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including the John & Mary Markle Scholar in Academic Medicine Award, Rockefeller Public Service Award, Harold W. Comer, MD, MPH and a team of Yale Child Study Center colleagues worked with the two schools that eventually rivaled the city's highest income schools, had the best attendance record, and no serious behavior problems. He Co-chaired an NCATE National Expert Panel on Increasing the Application of Knowledge About Child and Adolescent Development in Educator Preparation Programs.ĭr. He was a consultant to Children’s Television Workshop and has served as a consultant, committee member, advisory board member and trustee to numerous local and national organizations serving children. He has served on the board of several universities, foundations, and corporations. He is a co-founder, and past president of the Black Psychiatrists of America. His pioneering work in school restructuring has been featured in numerous newspapers, magazines and television reports and published in many academic journals. He is the author of ten books, including Maggie’s American Dream, and Leave No Child Behind and his most recent book, What I Learned in School: Reflections on Race, Child Development, and School Reform. He is known nationally and internationally for his creation in 1968 of the Comer School Development Program, (SDP) the forerunner of most modern school reform efforts. is the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut.

James comer yale child study center