The link between child health advocacy and the development of child health enterprise is evident in the history of the medical profession in the United States of America. This is one of the lessons in the chapter that a reader will find interesting to study. The impact of child health advocacy in America is characterized by the positive changes due to the actions of men and women who spoke up and made a difference in child health care. More often than not, they were unheralded, because their actions were rarely recognized. This is also a surprising discovery, that successful advocates for change did not seek personal credit on account of their contributions. Nevertheless, they spoke up against issues concerning child health care, and at the same time, they demonstrated how to correct the said problem. This is a primary lesson that health workers should consider in the present time.
A background study on the history of child health care in America is incomplete without mentioning the contributions of Abraham Jacobi and Job Lewis Smith. Historians were in agreement that these two men were the founding fathers of American pediatrics. They were not only passionate about the importance of pediatric care, they were also one of the first to combine the principles of medicine, public health, and advocacy. They made their mark while serving families living in the city of New York during the latter part of the 19th century. Their major contributions to the field of medicine was the advocacy to change pediatric care strategy based on the idea that children and youth respond to illness in a different manner. Jacobi coined the term pediatrics to define a new field of medical study.
Jane Addams on the other hand changed the course of pediatrics history when she established Hull House as a community center. The main purpose of the Hull House was to meet the medical needs of immigrants that descended into the city of Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. Her advocacy was described as the pragmatic response to the realization that dreadful health problems among children was rooted in socio-economic factors. Hull house attracted resident physicians working as volunteers. One of the volunteers name was Alice Hamilton. Her major contribution was the systematic analysis of infant mortality rates in relation to frequency of pregnancies.
Helen Taussig was another brilliant health worker who graduated with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She earned her degree at the time when the medical profession had little regard for female doctors. She went on to exceed expectations as she established a sub-specialty called pediatric cardiology. It paved the way for pediatric cardiac surgery.
Robert Haggerty and his team advocated the importance of primary health care by creating the Family Health Care Program. It was based on research data that revealed the interactions of community events, family factors, and children’s health. Haggerty and his team discovered that aside from the effect of microorganisms, it was also the effect of poverty, overcrowding, and stress that made children sick.
Historians considered Julius Richmond as the consummate advocate. Once Richmond identified a problem that he cared about, he will do everything in his power to solve it. He used political know-how and strategic acumen to accomplish a particular goal. He was credited for the discovery that the intricate development of an infant’s brain was dependent on organized input coming from the external environment.
Just like her predecessors who made a difference in transforming the world of pediatric medicine, Anne Dyson changed the way people view child health care through the Community Pediatrics Training Initiative. It was an organized approach to advocacy that taught young doctors how to develop the skill and the attitude to save the lives of children threatened by poverty, hunger, violence, racism, and ethnic misunderstanding. Dyson’s legacy paved the way for the integration of advocacy into the fabric of pediatric preparation.