A New Age For Pediatrics: Change, Challenge, and Cost
Glenn Austin MD
The motif for the Academy's current campaign to promote pediatrics and pediatricians is A New Age for Pediatrics. One of the implications of this campaign and motif is that we will officially state that US pediatricians, the specialists in growth and development, take better care of the health needs of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults, and that the scope of our practice is broadening. Another implication is that pediatrics is in a new era of increasing strength, vigor, assertiveness, and provision of satisfaction to both its patients and practitioners. Realization of these goals spells change, challenge, and cost.
Neither change nor challenge are new to our field. The early pediatricians were sick-baby specialists. Pioneers such as Abraham Jacobi recognized the need to emphasize prevention, particularly among the underprivileged. Others were later farsighted enough to recognize the importance of extending the concept of well-child care to all children and began to convince parents to bring their children for visits when they were well so that immunizations could be given, growth and development could be assessed, and advice on matters of diet and hygiene could be given. Immunization rates went up and the frequency and severity of contagious diseases began to diminish. Recognizing the intrinsic value and distinct promise of pediatrics as a field, medical schools expanded their pediatrics departments, and an increasing number of young physicians began to enter pediatrics, especially in the post-World War II years. All were superbly trained in the care of sick children and, to a considerable degree, they functioned as consultants to general practitioners.
