Special Reports
Two of the greatest weaknesses of school health programs are involved in serious controversies that have interfered with obtaining federal legislation for meeting needs where state and local funds are inadequate for satisfactory services.
First, there has been a failure in team work between educators and public health personnel, "Doctors are told what they should do by people who do not know what a doctor can do." Medical and nursing services have failed in their educational objectives. Educators and medical personnel have worked independently on the same children as if each child was sharply divided into mind and body. Very little joint planning has been done by the two professions to solve the problems of children and their development. This failure in team work has been the result largely of a continued rivalry over jurisdiction as to who will spend the money, who will have the power, and who will receive the credit. The two great professions of education and medicine have only occasionally, here and there, learned how to use the great resources of the two professions to serve children.
Second there has been the frequent failure to get something done for the children in need of medical service. Often the trouble is merely a failure to use the medical facilities that are available in the community. Not infrequently the trouble has had its origin in inadequate education as to how to use those facilities. But the big controversy has been over the question of whether all medical services will be free to all children regardless of ability to pay, or whether a prepayment plan for medical care will be compulsory or voluntary, and whether the federal government will control the funds and pay the physician or whether each community will work out their own plan for making medical service available to all. These problems, of course, can not be divorced from the aims and efforts of the medical profession to improve the knowledge and skill of the physician and the development of laboratory and special diagnostic facilities so that they may be available as needed. Any progress made in extending medical facilities to care for those who might benefit and in the improvement of the quality can come only through agreement rather than through continuing the controversy.
Your Committee on School Health has indicated one important way that the work of the physician in the schools can contribute to pediatric health supervision and post graduate medical education.
