2004 Recipient - Robert J. Haggerty, MD
Recognized for: Lifetime commitment and contributions to excellence in health care for children.
Robert J. Haggerty, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Chair, Emeritus, at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He is a pediatrician and a graduate of Cornell University and its Medical College (Phi Beta Kappa and AOA). His major interests are in promoting the health of children and youth through the establishment of more effective integrated services and policies that will assist them in achieving their full potential. He is likely the most prominent leader in pediatric medicine in the second half of the 20th century having trained two generations of pediatricians who are the leaders of pediatrics today. He transformed pediatric training and pediatric care models in ways that still support excellence in children's health care. He was a leader in patient-centered care decades ago.
His initial faculty experiences were at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Medical Center of Boston, where he developed a training and research program in family pediatrics. There, his interest began in the effects of psychosocial stress as a cause of many children's illnesses. His research on the association of life stress and increased susceptibility of children to infections was a stimulus for many other researchers investigating the physiologic basis for this finding.
His next career position was at the University of Rochesters School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics. At Rochester, he and his colleagues developed community-based health services for children and coined the phrase "the new morbidity" for the psychosocial problems of children. He then returned to Boston where he was Roger I. Lee Professor of Health Services at Harvard School of Public Health, and Chairman of the Department of Health Services (a department that included maternal and child health, behavioral sciences, and health services administration).
He is author of more than 150 original papers; editor or author of three books, one of which is now in its fifth edition (Ambulatory Pediatrics); and author of nearly 200 book chapters, editorials, and abstracts. He has been Visiting Professor and/or name lecturer at more than 50 institutions.
Dr. Haggerty was Editor of Pediatrics in Review, the continuing education journal of The American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as a past President of that organization. He was Executive Director of the International Pediatric Association. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine (formerly a member of its Council and Chair of its Committee on the Prevention of Mental Disorders), the American Pediatric Society, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is Chair of the New York Academy of Medicines Forum on Child Health. He has been Co-Editor of Pediatrics, Associate Editor of The New England Journal, and Chairman of the Health Services Research Study Section of the National Center for Health Services Research; a member of the Board of Overseers of the Social Sciences at Tufts University; a member of the Board of Visitors of the School of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma; and past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. He was a founding member of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association and was its president.
He chaired the Mayors Committee on Child Health (NYC), the Subcommittee on Adolescents and AIDS, and the Committee on Neonatal AIDS of the New York State Governors Commission on AIDS; was a member of the New York State Council of Graduate Medical Education, a member of the Carnegie Council on Children; and of the Board of Alliance for Health Care for All (J. Rockefeller Chair), and was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Committee on Successful Adolescence. He was on the Board of Directors of Praxis, the company to produce the first approved Haemophilus influenzae vaccine. He was formerly President of the William T. Grant Foundation, which supports research on ways to improve the mental health of school-age children and to assist them in utilizing their full potential.
