TRENDS
Having surveyed the health services for children throughout the nation during the postwar years and having given attention to ways of meeting the needs which were revealed, the Academy, through its Committee for the Improvement of Child Health, called attention to the importance of further development of regional planning for pediatric education and services. This Committee in a report published in 1950 stated: To meet this two-fold need [better training for physicians and better distribution of services], a solution is evolving which has as its keystone regional planning for the decentralization of training which carries with it a better distribution of medical care into the very areas where the greatest deficiencies have been shown to exist. This concept is not new or original. It has been receiving a great deal of emphasis particularly in relation to hospitals and to a lesser degree in relation to medical schools. Evidence of progress along lines recommended by the Academy in its 1950 report is again apparent. Early in October 1953 a group of 100 educators, doctors and public officials met under the auspices of the Massachusetts Medical-Dental School Commission to explore the possibilities of regional cooperation in medicine, dentistry and veterinary practice. Emphasis was placed upon a program that would cooperate with existing private and public institutions rather than compete with them.