Conception and Creation of the American Academy of Pediatrics

In the latter years of the 19th century, and to an increasing degree in the first decades of the 20th, there arose in the United States and elsewhere a growing concern for the health and welfare of women and children, especially pregnant mothers and infants. Compared with current figures, maternal and infant mortality rates were extremely high, and there were virtually no widespread programs to avoid malnutrition and a host of preventable diseases and disabilities in childhood. Isolated instances of good maternal and infant programs existed, but it became obvious that our country needed national programs to improve child health and welfare.

Download Full-text

American Academy of Pediatrics Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) Program: A Model for Supporting Community Pediatricians

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.112.s3.735 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 112 (Supplement_3) ◽

pp. 735-737

Author(s):

O. Marion Burton

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Health Care ◽

Health Insurance ◽

Child Health ◽

American Academy ◽

The United States ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

American Academy Of Pediatrics ◽

Community Access ◽

And Child Health

The Issue. Advocacy on behalf of children who are medically underserved and the pediatricians who care for them has been a long-standing core commitment of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Although different in etiology, barriers to adequate health care exist in both nations. In the United States, almost 18 million children have either no health insurance or inadequate coverage, whereas in the United Kingdom, parents can, in most cases, readily enroll their youngsters in a universal health insurance program that is not dependent on employers or employment.1 However, despite universal access to health care in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, there are infants and children who do not regularly use or otherwise connect to available health care delivery systems. Many of these families are not participants in other social systems (eg, church, school, voting, employment, property ownership/rental) and therefore are not known to governments, agencies, authorities, or health care professionals. Both nations have citizens living in extreme poverty with its associated environmental and health hazards and tendencies to health risk behaviors. Both the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics have strategies and programs to address these issues and to support pediatricians who work in their communities to improve the lives of children. The following describes the American Academy of Pediatrics Community Access to Child Health infrastructure that supports practicing community pediatricians in these efforts and opportunities to develop collaborative international endeavors to advance the practice of community pediatrics.

Download Full-text

THE ACADEMY 1960-61

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.29.1.148 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 148-152

Author(s):

George M. Wheatley

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Private Practice ◽

The United States ◽

Business Meeting ◽

Annual Business ◽

News Letter ◽

The Past ◽

American Academy Of Pediatrics ◽

National Programs ◽

Important Purpose

This will be a brief report about some important national programs and actions since our annual business meeting a year ago. While they help demonstrate the Academy's influence and breadth of interest in child health affairs, these developments also are a challenge to our leadership. How to keep pace with this broadening public interest and also maintain a private practice is the dilemma of most pediatricians. It can be done, it must be done, and it will be done, if each of our members takes seriously the obligation of Fellowship. As an organization we continue to grow at an impressive rate. In the past 10 years our membership in the United States has more than doubled. Altogether there are slightly more than 7,000 members in the Academy. Of these, more than 5,700 are in the United States, 231 in Canada and 940 in Latin America. With greater size comes a greater problem in communication. The annual business meeting—though it serves an important purpose in this respect—is not enough. Our News Letter is becoming increasingly useful as a means of reaching all our members. The brochure "An Introduction to the American Academy of Pediatrics," published this year, fills the need for a brief description of the purpose, organization and program of the Academy. A new publication, Careers in Pediatrics, soon to be issued will give young people some better understanding of pediatrics and show them that as a specialty it has many inviting possibilities. This all helps. But for the Academy of fulfill its purpose to improve the health of all children, it must mobilize the ideas and efforts of all its members.

Download Full-text

Child Health Services and Pediatric Education. Report of the Committee for the Study of Child Health Services of the American Academy of Pediatrics, with the cooperation of the United States Public Health Service and the United States Children's Bureau.

Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine ◽

10.1001/archpedi.1950.04040020370021 ◽

1950 ◽

Vol 80 (2) ◽

pp. 361

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Child Health ◽

Health Services ◽

Public Health Service ◽

United States Public Health ◽

The United States ◽

Child Health Services ◽

American Academy Of Pediatrics ◽

Pediatric Education ◽

Education Report

Download Full-text

CHILD HEALTH SUPERVISION–IS IT WORTH IT?

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.52.2.272 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 52 (2) ◽

pp. 272-277 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alfred Yankauer

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Child Health ◽

American Academy ◽

Social Reform ◽

The United States ◽

Prevention Education ◽

Health Supervision ◽

American Academy Of Pediatrics ◽

Recent Statement ◽

Age Of Enlightenment

It is something of a paradox that pediatricians should question the worth of child health supervision, "the foundation of pediatrics," as a recent statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics has asserted.1 It was the concepts of prevention, education, and counsel rather than the peculiarities of children's disease which set Cadogan, Armstrong and John Bunnell Davis apart from other English physicians in the Age of Enlightenment. It was the linkage of child health supervision to the swell of social reform at the turn of the present century which sowed the seeds of pediatrics as a specialty in the United States.

Download Full-text

Factors Affecting Reports of Neonatal Deaths in United States and Elsewhere

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.45.6.1042b ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 1042-1042

Author(s):

Laurance N. Nickey

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Mortality Rate ◽

Infant Mortality ◽

The United States ◽

Mortality Rates ◽

Infant Mortality Rate ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Neonatal Deaths ◽

American Academy Of Pediatrics

Again, I have read that the United States' infant mortality rate is "a disgrace and totally unacceptable," that the Nation's infant mortality rate is 21.7 per 1000 live births, and that there are 12 countries which have lower infant mortality rates than the United States. I would very much like to challenge the Editorial Board of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Pediatrics to help clarify this somewhat mysterious but often quoted figure. I would like to see in print an authoritative report outlining the criteria for neonatal death as used in this country and its several states, and also the countries that are commonly listed in the forefront, in so far as infant mortality rates are concerned.

Download Full-text