Paul H. Dworkin, MD
Professor and Chairman
Physician-in-Chief

October 1, 2008

To Whom It May Concern:

I am greatly honored to enthusiastically and emphatically endorse the nomination of The Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting by Dan Doyle, with Deborah Doermann Burch, for a 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

I am an academic pediatrician and am privileged to hold leadership positions in the field of Pediatrics and the subspecialty of Development and Behavioral Pediatrics. As a pediatrician, my role is to guide parents in promoting their children’s optimal growth and development. As an academic leader, I am committed to designing and promoting evidence-based innovations to enhance the effectiveness of clinical practice in promoting children’s development, while also being responsible for the education and training of the next generation of health providers. The Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting is an extraordinarily comprehensive resource that informs both parents and child health providers, alike. This remarkable text addresses virtually all aspects of youth sports through a unique combination of insightful observations, expert opinions, informative anecdotes, and research findings. Dan Doyle offers guidance on nurturing in our children such desirable qualities as integrity, a strong work ethic, mental toughness, self-discipline and self-control, self-reliance and self-esteem, teamwork, leadership, organizational skills, “competitive self restraint”, willpower, trust, and delayed gratification. These rich recommendations have profound implications that extend beyond sports and also serve as a superb handbook on effective parenting.

I particularly wish to emphasize two characteristics of the text that contribute to its extraordinary uniqueness and value. Throughout my career spanning some three decades, I consistently emphasize the critical importance of assuming a developmental approach to issues of concern to children and their families. I urge our trainees and community child health care providers to always consider parents’ questions and concerns in the context of children’s developmental stage and relevant, age-specific themes. I am always pleased when our trainees grasp the importance and value of such an approach. Dan Doyle, without the benefit of formal training in child development, intuitively and experientially adopts a developmentally-oriented approach, serving to enhance the credibility of this important work and validating its many important recommendations and insights.

As an academic physician, I am also mindful of the importance of ensuring that recommendations are evidence-based, supported whenever possible by research data. While Dan Doyle offers many anecdotes from his extraordinarily rich experience working with children in many venues, his recommendations and lessons learned are informed by his research on children and sports. I was so impressed by his developmentally-oriented, evidence-based approach that I invited Dan to speak at one of our Grand Rounds, the major teaching conference of our University of Connecticut Department of Pediatrics. Dan’s wonderful story telling and personal anecdotes, in combination with data from his research on children and their experiences with sports, captivated our audience while offering insights of importance to child health specialists, many of whom are also parents of children participating in a wide array of sports activities.

Finally, as the author/editor of three textbooks and as Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, I am intimately familiar with the remarkable creativity, perseverance, and diligence required to publish a work of this scope, clarity, organization, and quality. I can conceive of no greater or more fitting honor than receipt of a Pulitzer Prize for this remarkable effort. I am confident that this text is a fitting addition to the list of distinguished awardees.

Thank you for the privilege of supporting this nomination.

Paul H. Dworkin, MD
Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics
University of Connecticut School of Medicine
Physician-in-Chief
Connecticut Children’s Medical Center
Hartford, Connecticut