The past provides many core lessons in improving children's public health. This paper explores three such lessons: the need to focus on the environment that makes children sick rather than on sick children; the need to attack the biggest problems, not the most scientifically interesting ones; and the need to provide services where children are most likely to be. To illuminate these lessons, Howard Markel and Janet Golden discuss important child public health efforts from the 19th and 20th centuries that children's health professionals and policymakers should consider as they set the agenda for the 21st century.
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