Marie McCormick is the daughter of Clare B. McCormick and Atty. Richard J. McCormick, Jr. of Haverhill, Massachusetts, where she spent her youth and attended St. James Church. She had three siblings. Her mother's first name became Marie's middle name.
McCormick, who is licensed to practice pediatric medicine in Massachusetts, joined the Harvard Medical School in 1987 as associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Infant Follow-up Program at Boston Children's Hospital. In 1992, she was selected to be the chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, which position she held until 2003 when the department was merged with another to create the now Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is the director of a standing training program in maternal and child health, which has had sustained federal funding for over 60 years, and she teaches the foundational course in this topic at Harvard Chan. McCormick is internationally recognized for her research in the outcomes of high-risk infants, especially preterm infants, and the evaluation of programs to improve their outcomes. She was co-principal investigator of a national demonstration program to assess the effect of regionalizing perinatal services to improve neonatal mortality. In addition, she was a major contributor, in a variety of roles and principal investigator of the follow-up at 18 years of age, to the Infant Health and Development Program, a controlled trial of and early childhood educational intervention for preterm, low birth weight infants. While she is a member of several professional societies, her most active roles have been in the Academic Pediatric Association where she now holds the position of Senior Associate Editor for the journal, Academic Pediatrics, and in the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Medicine to which she was elected a member in 1997. She has chaired several significant committees for the latter including the Committee on Perinatal Transmission of HIV, and, most recently, the Committee on the Health Effects of Marijuana. However, her most important role was a chair of the Committee on Immunization Safety, which issued, among others, three reports noting no association of immunizations with autism, a role for which she received the David Rall Medal from the Institute of Medicine for exceptional committee service. She continued her work on vaccine safety as a member of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee where she chaired the Working Group to assess the safety of the 2009 Epidemic H1N1 Influenza Vaccine.
Publications
McCormick has published twelve books and monographs, as well as over 280 scientific papers, reviews, editorials, reports, and abstracts. * * * *
Personal life
Marie McCormick is married to Robert J. Blendon, DSc, also a faculty member at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They live in Waban, Massachusetts.
