Patrice Engle

Patrice Lee Engle (December 1, 1944 – September 22, 2012) was a developmental psychologist known as a pioneer in the field of global early childhood development and for her international work advocating for children's education and healthcare. Engle introduced the concept of the development quotient, a numerical indicator of a child's growth across a range of psychosocial competencies, as a critical measure for international studies of child development trajectories.

Awards Engle received the Distinguished International Contributions to Child Development Award from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) in 2011. In her honor, the SRCD awards the Patrice L. Engle Dissertation Grant annually to doctoral students interested in careers in global early child development and who are from or doing research in low- or middle-income countries.

Engle was an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Biography Patricia Lee Engle was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 1, 1944. Other work focusing on orphans and vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa was funded by the Bernard van Leer Foundation. She helped to spearhead two Lancet Series of on early child development In 2007 and 2011. and held the title of senior advisor for UNICEF for seven years. Other projects led her to spend a year in Geneva, Switzerland working for the World Health Organization and a year at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC. Engle's work was conducted on an international national scale. She increased understanding and provided strategies to address child poverty and related health issues. She spread awareness by personally traveling and assisting researchers and also participating in conducted research by writing books on these issues.

Books

Britto, P. R., Engle, P. L., & Super, C. M. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of early childhood development research and its impact on global policy. Oxford University Press. Pollitt, E., Gorman, K. S., Engle, P. L., Martorell, R., Rivera, J., Wachs, T. D., & Scrimshaw, N. S. (1993). Early supplementary feeding and cognition: Effects over two decades. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(7), i-118.

Representative publications Engle, P. L. (1991). Maternal work and child‐care strategies in peri‐urban Guatemala: Nutritional effects. Child Development, 62(5), 954–965. Engle, P. L. (1997). The role of men in families: Achieving gender equity and supporting children. Gender & Development, 5(2), 31–40. Engle, P. L., & Black, M. M. (2008). The effect of poverty on child development and educational outcomes. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1136, 243–256. Engle, P. L., Black, M. M., Behrman, J. R., De Mello, M. C., Gertler, P. J., Kapiriri, L.... & International Child Development Steering Group. (2007). Strategies to avoid the loss of developmental potential in more than 200 million children in the developing world. The Lancet, 369(9557), 229–242. Engle, P. L., Fernald, L. C., Alderman, H., Behrman, J., O'Gara, C., Yousafzai, A.... & Iltus, S. (2011). Strategies for reducing inequalities and improving developmental outcomes for young children in low-income and middle-income countries. The Lancet, 378(9799), 1339–1353. Engle, P. L., Menon, P., & Haddad, L. (1999). Care and nutrition: concepts and measurement. World Development, 27(8), 1309–1337.