Nan Streeter, President of AMCHP's Board of Directors, presents Dr. van Dyck with the Vince Hutchins Award.

Peter van Dyck thanks AMCHP for award.

HRSA Associate Administrator for Maternal and Child Health Peter van Dyck received the prestigious Vince Hutchins Leadership Award from the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) during the association’s recent annual meeting in Alexandria, Va.

“I am so pleased that Dr. van Dyck has been recognized by our members and his colleagues for all that he has contributed to improving the health of women, children and families,” said Michael Fraser, AMCHP’s chief executive officer. “We continue to look to him and HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau for leadership on MCH issues.”

In 1998, AMCHP established the AMCHP Leadership Award to recognize individuals for outstanding contributions in the area of maternal and child health. In 2001, after the death of Dr. Hutchins, a national leader and lifelong advocate for children’s health, AMCHP renamed the award in his honor. Dr. Hutchins was one of Dr. van Dyck’s predecessors at MCHB, serving as associate administrator for 15 years.

Dr. van Dyck, a pediatrician, has headed MCHB for the past 10 years. The bureau’s $850 million FY 2008 budget promotes the health of mothers, children and families, particularly children with special health care needs and their families, low-income families or those that lack access to care.

Before joining the federal government in 1992, Dr. van Dyck was director of the Family Health Services Division of the Utah Department of Health and professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah Medical Center. He earned a medical degree and a master of science degree in physiology from the University of Illinois Medical Center Chicago, and a master of public health degree in maternal and child health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Past recipients of the Vince Hutchins award include Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in 2002 and Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2005.