History of Military Pediatrics: Fifty Years of Training and Deploying Uniformed Pediatricians

Abstract

* Abbreviations: AAP = : American Academy of Pediatrics • CHAMPUS = : Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services • USUHS = : Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences • HPSP = : Health Professions Scholarship Program In 1998, Pediatrics celebrated its 50th anniversary with a commemorative issue.1Publication of the journal began 18 years after the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was founded (1930) and 15 years after the American Board of Pediatrics was established in 1933. Thus as a specialty, pediatrics is relatively young. Academic pediatrics in America traces its origins to Jacobi, Osler, and Forchheimer with the establishment of the American Pediatric Society in 1888.2However, until the second half of this century, the specialty foundered in the shadow of internal medicine. Fifty years ago, military and civilian pediatrics in America emerged from the shadow together. The parallels between the two are remarkable, and their histories are inextricably interwoven. In the autumn of 1946, the first military pediatric training program was established. The first program was fully approved in 1949.3 Thus, the end of this decade marks the 50th anniversary of military pediatrics, and serves as an opportunity to review the history of providing care for the children of service members as well as the present and future role of pediatricians in the military. The family members of American soldiers have received care from military physicians for more than 100 years. When the US Army was posted to distant sites in the West in the 19th century, “… Wives accompanied their husbands, slept in tents, had babies, a good many in the wilderness, reared them in the fear of God and Indians but of nothing else.”4 Army surgeons regularly cared for the wives and children of the soldiers as well as the children of friendly Indians and the settlers who followed the migration westward.5 Navy physicians were encouraged to make house calls as long as the distance from the dispensary to the home was a reasonable horseback or carriage …