David Olds is a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and preventive medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and director of the Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health. He has devoted his career to investigating methods of preventing health and developmental problems in children and parents from low-income families. His original work, carried out in Elmira, N.Y., examined the effects of prenatal and postpartum nurse home visitation on the outcomes of pregnancy, infant caregiving and maternal life-course development, and determined the impact of those services on government spending. He currently is carrying out an urban replication of the Elmira study in Memphis, Tenn., a 19-year follow-up study of the Elmira sample and another replication of the Elmira and Memphis studies in the Denver metropolitan area. The Denver trial examines the contributions that paraprofessional and nurse home visitors can make to improving the health of mothers and children from low-income families. Olds, a member of the American Pediatrics Society, received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. from Cornell University.