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In memoriam: Dr. van Dyck, former MCHB associate administrator

February 1, 2025

Peter C. van Dyck, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., FAAP, of Phoenixville, Pa., who worked in the federal government for two decades to improve the health of mothers, children and families, died Nov. 30, 2024, at age 84 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. van Dyck joined the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) in 1992. He served as the first permanent director of the MCHB Office of State and Community Health from 1992-’98. He then served as MCHB associate administrator for maternal and child health from 1998-2011.

Within HHS, he developed the first data collection and performance measurement system to better understand how well MCHB block grant recipients deliver care. He also served as executive secretary of the HHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality and as a senior medical adviser to the directors of MCHB and HRSA.

Prior to joining the federal government, Dr. van Dyck was an instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago from 1968-’69 and an assistant professor and associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah Medical Center from 1976-’93.

He served as director of maternal and child health in the Utah State Division of Health from 1973-’74 and was appointed director of Family Health Services within the Utah Department of Health from 1974-’92.

Born in 1939 in Peoria, Ill., Dr. van Dyck earned his B.A. in physiology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; an M.S. in physiology and an M.D. from the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago; and an M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.

Prior to receiving his M.P.H., he served in the United States Army as chief of pediatrics at the Frankfurt Health Clinic in Germany. He worked as a primary nursery physician at 97th General Hospital in Frankfort and was honorably discharged in 1972. The following year, he served as a pediatric consultant for the International Red Cross in Amman, Jordan.

In 2017, he was awarded the MCHB Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the Martha May Eliot Award from the American Public Health Association in 2011 and the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service from HHS in 1998. He was awarded the Arthur Flemming Award in 1998 from George Washington University for his accomplishments on behalf of mothers and children.

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