Robert J. Haggerty: Exemplary Academic Generalist

Letter from the Editor Robert J. Haggerty: Exemplary Academic Generalist This issue of the journal includes a tribute to Robert J. Haggerty, MD, on the dedication of new pediatric research laboratories at the University of Rochester1 as well as a paper arising from his receipt of the Alfred I. Dupont 2004 Award for Excellence in Child Health from the Nemours Foundation.2 Bob Haggerty has played a pivotal role in academic general pediatrics. One of the founders of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association, he has served as its president and was one of the early George Armstrong lecturers. He chaired the department of pediatrics at the University of Rochester during an exceptionally productive time, where he nurtured the notions of community and social pediatrics, built a strong, multidisciplinary research team, and trained numerous scholars who have since populated many departments around the country (and around the world). (Many of the Rochester faculty from that time have been Ambulatory Pediatric Association presidents: Evan Charney, Bob Hoekelman, Phil Nader, and Barry Pless.) The work at this time, welldocumented in Child Health and the Community,3 emphasized the “new morbidities” of childhood, fielding innovative research and program development in school health, community and rural health centers, childhood chronic illness, and adolescent medicine, among others. Prior to his work at Rochester, Haggerty had trained at Boston Children’s Hospital, with Charles Janeway as one of his mentors. He spent a formative year in London, working with leading social epidemiologists, who gave him critical new insights into the complex changes in child health and morbidity and the multiple interactions with the physical and social environment that influence child health. This experience (and others) broadened his commitment to involving social and behavioral scientists in his research. At Boston Children’s Hospital, Bob developed the Family Health Care Program,4 again with many illustrious colleagues, including Margaret Heagarty and Joel Alpert, pioneering in family and community studies of common childhood diseases, including imaginative studies of how physical and social environments affect acquisition of streptococci and host response to infection.5 After leaving Rochester, Bob went to the Harvard School of Public Health, chairing the departments of maternal and child health and of behavioral sciences (an indication of the breadth and scope of his interests). Here, with a number of colleagues, including Deborah Klein Walker, Steven Gortmaker, and Michael Weitzman, he organized new community research endeavors, building on the Rochester experience, describing some of the growth in childhood chronic conditions, and again studying the interactions of family and environment with children in the progression of their disease and its consequences for growth, development, and behavior. During this period, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Bob developed the Academic General Pediatrics fellowship program, a major endeavor over more than 10 years to enhance the training of young research faculty in general pediatrics6 – providing another legacy of trainees who have populated many pediatric departments in the United States and abroad and forming the basis for the efforts of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association to develop standards for fellowship training in general pediatrics.7 Bob has also co-edited (with Morris Green and more recently Michael Weitzman) the textbook, Ambulatory Pediatrics (not to be confused with the current journal!). Haggerty left Harvard to become president of the William T. Grant Foundation, building new programs to nurture young scientists in child development. Here, he also developed research networks in several areas of child health and development – consortia of scholars who came together to enhance collaboration in areas critical to child and family well-being. He also encouraged programs of action research – linking researchers to good community interventions for child health. Bob left the William T. Grant Foundation to return to the University of Rochester, where he continues as a member of the faculty, very much involved in encouraging medical students to enter pediatrics and in nurturing the careers of the continuing stream of bright young pediatricians spending time in that community. During this career, Bob found time also to serve as president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. His tenure was marked by major expansions in research activities at the Academy, including the development of the Pediatric Research in Office Settings program – for which community practice research in Rochester had been a critical forerunner. He also founded and edited Pediatrics in Review. It is a great pleasure to publish these two papers by and about Bob Haggerty in Ambulatory Pediatrics. This issue of the journal (and indeed all issues) have papers that reflect the work of Robert Haggerty and his students – as examples, the first two original articles in this issue address important issues of family characteristics influencing child health.8,9 Haggerty’s remarkable contributions serve provide guidance to much of what we do in academic general pediatrics and in the community. James M. Perrin, MD Editor AMBULATORY PEDIATRICS Copyright © 2006 by Ambulatory Pediatric Association

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REFERENCES 1. Florin TA, Klein JD, Szilagyi PG, Weitzman M, McAnarney ER. Community as Laboratory: Reflections from Rochester in Celebration of the Dedication of the Robert J. Haggerty Child Health Services Research Laboratories. Ambulatory Pediatrics, 2006; 3: 130 –133 2. Haggerty RJ. Some steps needed to ensure the health of America’s children: Lessons learned from fifty years in pediatrics. Ambulatory Pediatrics, 2006; 3: 123–129 3. Haggerty RJ, Roghmann KJ, Pless IB. Child Health and the Community. New York, NY: Wiley; 1975 4. Alpert JJ, Robertson LS, Kosa J, Heagarty MC, Haggerty RJ. Delivery of health care for children: report of an experiment. Pediatrics, 1976, 57: 917–930 5. Meyer RJ, Haggerty RJ Streptococcal infections in families; Factors altering individual susceptibility. Pediatrics, 1962; 29: 539 –549 6. Haggerty RJ, Sutherland S. The Academic General Pediatrician: Is the Species Still Endangered? Pediatrics (Journal of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association), 1999; 104: 137–142 7. Ludwig S. Academic General Pediatrics: From Endangered Species to Advanced Scholars of General Pediatrics: The Report of a Consensus Conference. Ambulatory Pediatrics, 2004; 4: 407– 410 8. Corona R, Beckett MK, Cowgill BO, Elliott MN, Murphy DA, Zhou AJ, Schuster MA. Do Children Know Their Parent’s HIV-Status? Parental Reports of Child Awareness in a Nationally Representative Sample. Ambulatory Pediatrics, 2006; 3: 138 –144 9. Witt WP, Fortuna L, Wu E, Kahn RS, Winickoff JP, Pirraglia PA, Ferris TG, Kuhlthau K. Children’s Use of Motor Vehicle Restraints: Maternal Psychological Distress, Maternal Motor Vehicle Restraint Practices, and Sociodemographics. Ambulatory Pediatrics, 2006; 3: 145–151