PEDIATRICS Vol. 6 No. 1 July 1950, pp. 166-168
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PUBLIC HEALTH, NURSING AND MEDICAL SOCIAL WORK

MIDCENTURY WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH

MYRON E. WEGMAN M.D.

THE five White House Conferences represent in no small degree the stages in the development of pediatrics in the United States. The first Conference was called by President Roosevelt in 1909 to meet the needs of the orphaned, abandoned, and neglected children. It was the year in which the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality was organized. It was at a time when there was not a single fully developed pediatric clinic in the U.S.A.

As a result of this Conference the Children's Bureau was established in 1912, and it has continued to give at the Federal level leadership in the prevention of disease, improvement in the care of children and standardization of child labor practices. The American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality was organized to solve a problem by what today is called the multidisciplinary approach. It focused the attention of the pediatrician, the public health nurse, social worker, statistician, public health officer, and interested lay groups on the problem of high infant mortality, with a resulting remarkable success. A reduction of the infant mortality rate from 150 to 40 has been accomplished in the last 40 years. We must not forget that in 1909 we did not know how many babies were born in the United States. Complete birth registration was not accomplished until 1933.