Park Dietz - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Dietz was born in 1948 and raised in Camp Hill, Penn., a suburb of Harrisburg. His mother, Marjorie Dietz, who had trained as a nurse, did hospital volunteer work, including activities at a local mental institution. His father, Raymond Dietz, was a physician, as was Dietz’s grandfather.

Dietz graduated from Camp Hill High School in 1966 and that same year enrolled at Cornell to major in Psychology and Biology. He was a member of Cornell’s Theta Delta Chi fraternity. In 1970 he graduated with an A.B. cum laude in Psychology, and was a Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1970, Dietz received a senatorial scholarship to study at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, transferring in 1972 to Johns Hopkins University. There, he was among a handful of students in the M.D.-Ph.D. Program in Behavioral Sciences funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the Grant Foundation of New York. From 1972-1975, while completing medical school and course requirements for a Ph.D. in Social Relations, Dietz also earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree.

Dietz worked with the school’s noted public health professor Susan Baker on a study of drowning cases and their prevention and epidemiology, using the Haddon Matrix paradigm to categorize specific prevention measures for specific injuries. In 2012, Baker wrote that Dietz, “later applied the Matrix to the problem of rape, showing its value in formulating approaches to intentional injury…and the Haddon Matrix probably played a role in his development of an entire industry addressed to workplace violence prevention.”