Susan Minear, M.D., is Director of the Birth to Three Program at Boston Medical Center; She is also Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine,. Dr. Minear (formerly O'Brien) practices primary care pediatrics and is a board-certified behavioral and developmental pediatrician and a graduate fellow of the Zero to Three Leadership Development Initiative.

From 1997 to 2005, Dr. Minear served as Medical Director of the Newborn Nursery at Boston Medical Center, where she worked to transform a traditional newborn nursery practice into a developmentally rich service for newborns and families. Dr. Minear incorporated the NBO into newborn care and into medical student and resident education.

She implemented an infant massage program and was a cochairperson of the Baby Friendly task force through which Boston Medical Center achieved the World Health Organization's Baby Friendly status, a designation for hospital organizations that successfully follow the Ten Steps program to provide support for breast-feeding mothers. Lise C. Johnson is Director of Well Newborn Nurseries at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She is also an instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and a faculty member at The Brazelton Institute.

J. Kevin Nugent is Director of The Brazelton Institute at Children's Hospital Boston, and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nugent is a developmental psychologist and Founder and Director of The Brazelton Institute at Children's Hospital Boston.

He is co-author with Dr. Berry Brazelton of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) and has directed the NBAS training program since 1978. Dr. Nugent has conducted research on newborn behavior and parent and ndash;child relations in different cultural settings around the world and has published extensively on topics in infant and child development.

In addition, he has written the manual Using the NBAS with Infants and Parents (March of Dimes Foundation, 1985) and is senior author of the series The Cultural Context of Infancy (Vols. 1 and 2; Ablex 1989, 1991). Dr. Nugent is editor of Ab Initio, the international journal for professionals working with infants and families.