1. Education and early life

2. Career path

3. Awards and honors

4. Personal life

5. References

}}Martha G. Welch (born June 21, 1944) is an American physician and researcher specializing in the fields of infant and child development. Welch currently serves as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry in Pediatrics and Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), where she is Co-Director of the Nurture Science Program.^[1] Welch's research focuses on the biological mechanisms of nurture and the ways they can be utilized to provide new interventions for the prevention and treatment of developmental and behavioral disorders. The term ‘nurture’ is used by scientists within the Nurture Science Program to describe mother/parent-infant/child interactions which have a foundational role in promoting optimal emotional and behavioral development, such as holding, touching, breast feeding and communicating emotionally.^[2]

Education and early life

Martha Grace Welch was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Eggertsville, New York. Welch's great, great grandfather, Thomas Bramwell Welch, a physician and a dentist was the inventor of the pasteurization process to prevent the fermentation of grape juice in 1869. Thomas Bramwell, along with his son, Charles Edgar Welch, also a dentist, started Welch's Grape Juice Company in 1893.^[3] The company later became Welch's headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966 from New York University, Welch attended Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she earned her medical degree in 1971. Following medical school, Welch completed a residency in General Psychiatry (1972-1974) and a Fellowship in Child Psychiatry (1974-1977) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.^[4] She became a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology on November 30, 1977.^[5]

Career path

Welch first became interested in the possible treatment of autism during her fellowship. From 1975 to 1997, she operated a private practice, specializing in the treatment of emotional, behavioral and developmental disorders, including autism, maintaining offices in New York City and Greenwich, CT.^[6] In 1997, Welch left her practice to pursue a career in academia. She joined the faculty at Columbia University Medical Center's College of Physicians and Surgeons in the Department of Psychiatry. Here, she began preclinical research investigating secretin and oxytocin in the brain and the effects of combined oxytocin/secretin on an animal model of inflammatory bowel disease.^[7] In 2004 she began a collaboration with Michael D. Gershon M.D. pioneering research on the role of oxytocin in the gut. Drs. Welch and Gershon later established the Columbia University Brain Gut Initiative to further their understanding the mechanisms of nurture and they condition the brain-gut axis.^[8] In 2008 Welch was jointly appointed in Columbia University's Department of Pathology and Cell Biology. In 2010 Welch was jointly appointed in Columbia University's Department of Pediatrics, where she is conducting research on Family Nurture Intervention in the neonatal intensive care unit of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In 2013, Welch became Co-Director of the Nurture Science Program in the Department of Pediatrics.

Welch published the book "Holding Time" in the 1980s.^[9] This method involved physical restraint of the child by the mother for an hour each day. Younger children were restrained by the mother's arms while they faced the mother and straddled her lap; older children lay supine while the mother lay prone on top of them. Children resisted and struggled, but eventually became quiet. This approach was praised by the Nobel prizewinner Nikolaas Tinbergen.^[10] Dr. Tinbergen described the need for additional research and evidence to support Dr. Welch's research.{{Citation needed|date=June 2017}} Welch subsequently renamed this technique Prolonged Parent-Child Embrace and suggested it for oppositional behavior and attachment disorders. Her report of a nonrandomized, pre- and post-treatment study concluded that the method was effective.^[11] The design of that study has been criticized ^[12] and this type of therapy has been shown to be related to that of the German-Czech therapist Jirina Prekopova, whose methods have been described as potentially harmful.^[13]

Awards and honors

• 2019 Awarded Distinguished Fellowship of the American Psychiatric Association
• 2014 Gold Medal for Meritorious Service to Columbia University. College of Physicians & Surgeons^[14]
• 2013 P&S Alumni Lifetime Learning Award^[15]
• 2011 Columbia University Alumni Medal for Meritorious Service^[16]
• 1995 Middlebury College Distinguished Alumni Award^[17]

Personal life

Welch lives in New York City with her partner, Robert J. Ludwig, the managing director of the Nurture Science Program at Columbia University Medical Center's Department of Pediatrics. She has one son, and two grandsons living in Houston, Texas.

References

• The weather in Bordeaux
• The weather in Boston
• The weather in Bournemouth
• The weather in Bridgwater
• The weather in Bristol
• The weather in Cairo
• The weather in Calgary
• The weather in Cambridge
• The weather in Cannes
• The weather in Cardiff
• The weather in Ceuta
• The weather in Charlottetown
• The weather in Chelmsford
• The weather in Chesterfield
• The weather in Chicago
• The weather in Colchester
• The weather in Cork
• The weather in Crawley
• The weather in Denver
• The weather in Derry
• The weather in Detroit
• The weather in Doncaster
• The weather in Dover
• The weather in Dublin
• The weather in Dubrovnik