The New Pediatrics

When antibiotics became readily available in the 1950s, the danger of life-threatening infectious childhood diseases virtually disappeared. In that era, pediatricians broadened the core professional task of their specialty--the prevention and treatment of such diseases--to incorporate the behavioral and psychosocial problems of children and adolescents. Pediatricians themselves began to refer to this changing emphasis as the "new pediatrics," and to see the trend as a natural progression of thei