Child Health Policy: Where Are You When We Need You?

Abstract

There used to be something called child health policy. It was focused on crafting a national agenda for child health and was explicit in distinguishing the special needs of children from those of the adult world. During earlier periods, child health policy was dedicated to translating the rapidly expanding science of child development and pediatrics into crucial programmatic priorities and implementation strategies.1,2 The concern was as much for coherence as rigor and found concrete expression in the White House Conferences on Children and Youth that were held under the leadership of virtually every president from Theodore Roosevelt through Richard Nixon.