April 17, 2000
RELEASE ON RECEIPT

RENOWNED US CHILD ADVOCATE TO DISCUSS "POLITICAL MEDICINE" AT OBERLIN APRIL 28

Dr. Abraham Bergman: "The Practice of Political Medicine"

12:10 p.m. Friday, April 28

Room 108 Severance Hall 120 W. Lorain St.

Free and open to the public

For more information, contact David Egloff 440/775 4844

Betty.Gabrielli@oberlin.edu http://www.oberlin.edu

OBERLIN, OHIO -- If anyone has changed the world of US children during the last four decades, it is Dr. Abraham Bergman.

One of the country's foremost child advocates, the Seattle-based pediatrician has spent over 40 years caring for ill and injured children and employing "political medicine"-- using the political process to help the children and their families lead healthier and safer lives.

On April 28, Dr. Bergman will be speaking at Oberlin on his experience lobbying for better governmental agency treatment of parents whose children have died from sudden infant death syndrome (SID).

Currently a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a physician at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, Dr. Bergman served as the first president of the National Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Foundation (1972-77).

In the early 1970s, work with Seattle epidemiologists and pathologists made him aware that SID was a problem of immense proportions in which little research was being done.

He also discovered that families surviving SID were receiving little help from the medical profession--or the community at large--in coping with this tragedy, and some were being falsely accused of child abuse or, in some instances, jailed.

Appalled, he set out to change the way the medical community treated the problem, and worked tirelessly over five years to humanize the handling of SIDS and urge the allocation of sufficient research funds. His efforts resulted in the passage in the National Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Act in 1974, which created for the first time a mandated SID research program.

The experience led Dr. Bergman to write a primer on citizen activism titled Discovery of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Lessons in the Practice of Political Medicine (University of Washington Press 1988).

Dr. Bergman's work on SID issues, however, is not his first or only achievement. In the late '60s, he embarked on an intensive public education and lobbying campaign that culminated in the 1967 Flammable Fabrics Act that made children's sleepwear flame retardant.

His activities also led to the passage of the 1970 Poison Prevention Packaging Act, and his work on preventing power lawn mower injuries led to the creation of the National Commission on Product Safety and later the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Dr. Bergman played a major role in the implementation of the 1969 Food Stamp and School Lunch Programs, was the principal architect in the early 70s behind the National Health Service Corps, and worked for the passage of the Indian Health Improvement Act of 1976.

A national program to promote the use of bike helmets inaugurated by the American Academy of Pediatrics was modeled on a program he developed in Washington to reduce bicycle head injuries in children. He also has collaborated on a child pedestrian safety program considered to be the first in the U.S.

Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli 4/17/00 #34 bg