Introduction: The role of the pediatrician in military medicine.

The year 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Section on Uniformed Services of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In April 1959, the AAP’s Executive Board voted to approve the Section’s creation, an idea that was conceived nearly 2 years earlier by an army pediatrician named Major Bedford Berrey, who saw the need for an organization within the AAP’s larger umbrella that would advocate for both the unique needs of the military pediatrician as well as those of the military child and family. Counting 25 initial members from the army, navy, air force, and public health service, the Section on Military Pediatrics, as it was originally chartered, held its first organizational meeting in October 1959 at the AAP’s annual conference in Chicago, Illinois.1 Today, the Uniformed Services Section has grown to be the ninth largest section in the AAP, numberingover 900memberswhopractice not only in military facilities within the United States but in locations around the world from Europe to Asia, and from theMiddle East to the North Pacific. Its members include military pediatric residents, new pediatricians embarking on their first tours of duty after residency, experienced clinicians and academicians throughout the military health care network, andevencurrentandpastCEOsof theAAP itself. In conjunctionwith the 2 military chapters of the AAP—Uniformed Services Chapter East and Chapter West, which were created in 1981 to give uniformed pediatricians equal voice in the creation and modification of policy within the AAP—the Section on Uniformed Services has been a vocal advocate for the children of military service members and the pediatricians who care for them in each of the last 6 decades. Although the initial idea behind publication of this supplement was to commemorate the Section’s 50th anniversary, our goal has since expanded to include 5 separate articles that each reveal an important aspect of the history of military pediatrics—a legacy that predates the Section’s creation by over a century. We start with an overview of the past, present, and future state of the military family and the health care system that has evolved to take care of those families, from army surgeonswho tended to the spouses and children of soldiers during the settlement of the western frontier in the 19th century to the present day worldwide network of military treatment facilities, which oversee the care of over 2million children.2 From there we present the history of the military’s graduate medical education programs, which began at Chelsea Naval Hospital in Massachusetts in 1946, only 13 years after the creation of pediatrics as a board-certified specialty in 1933. The growth of these programs, in addition to the later opening of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 1972 as the only federally run medical school in the nation, became key elements in the development, sustainment, and retention of a vital military pediatric AUTHOR: Clifton E. Yu, MD, FAAP