570 University Hall, School of Public Health

Berkeley, CA 94720-1190

Phone: 510-642-2830

Fax: 510-643-8771

W. Thomas Boyce, MD, Professor of Epidemiology and Child Development, joined the University of California, Berkeley, in January, 1996, as Director of the Division of Health and Medical Sciences and the UCB-UCSF Joint Medical Program. Dr. Boyce came to Berkeley from the University of California, San Francisco, where he served for 10 years as a Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics.

Dr. Boyce completed his undergraduate work at Stanford University, receiving a BA in philosophy and psychology in 1968. In 1972, he received his MD from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, after which he returned to the Bay Area for his internship and residency in pediatrics at UCSF. From 1974-76, he had the distinction of being a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Dr. Boyce taught at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center and served as Clinical Director of the Indian Health Service in Crownpoint, New Mexico. In 1985, Dr. Boyce was appointed to UCB as a visiting research associate and adjunct professor in epidemiology.

Dr. Boyce is a developmental psychobiologist/epidemiologist by research training and a pediatrician by clinical training. His research interests are focused on individual differences in children’s biological responses to psychological stress, and the role of such differences as risk factors for the biomedical and mental disorders of childhood. The Boyce Lab, housed in the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center of the Institute of Human Development, is involved in a number of funded projects examining behavioral, cardiovascular, adrenocortical, and immune responses both to standardized laboratory challenges and to naturally occurring environmental stressors. The Lab also has ongoing projects with primatologists at the NIH and the Orgeon Primate Center.

Dr. Boyce has written over 100 articles and abstracts on such topics as the influence of life events and family routines on childhood respiratory tract illness, the epidemiology of injuries in a large urban school district, psychosocial factors in outcomes of adolescent pregnancy, social and cultural factors in pregnancy complications among Navajo women, recurrent injuries in school children, and health-related risk factors of homeless families and single adults. Dr. Boyce is concerned with the broad view of medicine and how potential alliances with public health might invoke new ways of conceptualizing both fields.