The Importance of Touch in the Time of COVID-19

Dr. Tiffany Martini Field is Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Psychology, and Psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine and Director of the Touch Research Institute. She specializes in infant development, especially with regard to the impact of maternal postpartum depression on mother-infant interaction and the efficacy of massage and touch therapy in promoting growth and emotional well being in premature and low birth weight infants.

Field received the American Psychological Association Boyd McCandless Award for distinguished early career contributions to developmental psychology in 1979. In 2014, Field became the first psychologist to receive the Golden Goose Award for federally funded research on infant massage, an honor she shared with Saul Schanberg, Cynthia Kuhn, and Gary Evoniuk who established the beneficial effects of massage on growth in studies of rat pups.

Field is an author whose books include The Amazing Infant, Infancy, Touch, Touch Therapy, Complementary and Alternative Therapies Research, and Massage Therapy Research, as well as edited volumes.