TRENDS

Abstract

AT ABOUT the time the Academy's Study of Child Health Services was completed and many agencies were directing their energies with renewed vigor to the cause of better health for children, the American Public Health Association established a Committee on Child Health. This Committee, organized in 1948 under the chairmanship of Dr. Leona Baumgartner, undertook to coordinate the interests and activities of the various sections of the Association in regard to work with children. The Committee includes representatives from such sections as Maternal and Child Health, Nursing and Nutrition; a considerable proportion of its members are also members of the Academy. Its first project, as described below by its present chairman, Dr. Samuel M. Wishik, has been a study of child health supervision. "The Committee on Child Health has undertaken the ambitious task of developing or encouraging the development of statements on recommended practices and guides for the organization and operation of public health programs for children. The first specific task that the committee has tackled is the child health conference. A study staff appointed by the committee reviewed the literature on the subject over the past twenty years, analyzed manuals on the child health conference from health departments of 23 states and 8 cities and reviewed 37 manuals on public health nursing.