NATIONAL HEALTH PROGRAM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 1946 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, the Honorable James E. Murray (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Murray, Donnell, and Smith. The CHAIRMAN. The hearing will come to order. The first witness this morning is Dr. Clark Foreman, president of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. Dr. Foreman, will you take the seat here, please? STATEMENT OF DR. CLARK FOREMAN, PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTHERN CONFERENCE FOR HUMAN WELFARE Dr. FOREMAN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: I am president of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and I have a statement that I would like to present. ENDORSEMENT OF THE BILL The Southern Conference for Human Welfare is a nonprofit organization working for the betterment of the South in order to help improve the whole Nation. We unequivocably endorse the President's national health program and S. 1606, the Wagner-Murray-Dingell national health bill, the main measure to carry it out. We consider passage of this bill the most important single step necessary to improve the health of our people. We ask Congress to pass it this session. The Nation's health needs are serious. We cannot afford the luxury of delay. MORE SICKNESS IN THE SOUTH We in the South know a lot about ill health and inadequate medical care, because we have more of both than any other section of the country. We have worse selective service rejection and infant and maternal mortality rates, than does any other part of the country. We have fewer doctors, dentists and hospitals than any other section; and yet, because of lack of purchasing power, we do not even utilize fully those we do have. Our rural and our Negro populations are hit the hardest, but our industrial workers and the middle-income group are not so much better off. Let us take a few examples. More detailed health information on the South can be found in the "Good Health Issue" of our news paper, the Southern Patriot, which I wish to submit now for the record of the hearings. (The May issue of the Southern Patriot was introduced for the information of the committee.) (The matter referred to is as follows:) [From the Southern Patriot, Nashville, Tenn., May 1945] These charts tell only part of a sad and shocking story-a story of sickness and bad health the South and the Nation can ill afford. This issue of the Southern Patriot is devoted to a study of health in the South. We present first the symptoms-the facts and figures of our state of health; next, a diagnosis-a picture of the poverty that lies behind our illness; and then a prescription, based on the studies of Senator Pepper's Committee on Wartime Health and Education, and the North Carolina Governor's Commission on Hospital and Medical Care. A happy and prosperous South depends in the very first instance on a healthy people. We must not forget that this problem must be studied, tackled and solved if the people of our region are to play their rightful part in building a new South and a peaceful world. One of every two southern youth-in the prime of life-is unable to meet the minimum physical and mental requirements for military service. While the rest of the Nation furnished 65 eligible soldiers from every 100 men examined, the Southern States averaged only 49.6, a 40-percent increase of IV-F'ers in the South. These figures, released by Selective Service, and depicted State by State in the accompanying map, point accusingly to the health standards of the entire southern people. Many of the diseases which disqualify our young men as soldiers account, too, for the unusually high death rates in the South. Tuberculosis, for example, caused 45.9 of 100,000 deaths in the Nation as a whole in 1940, but in the Southeast, the figure was 56 deaths and in the Southwest, 631 There were 110 counties, or 17.8 percent of the counties in the Southeast, which REJECTIO OF DRAFTEES E) Feb., 1943-Aug Source: Medical Statistics Selective Service DOCTO 1940 Source: Based on table tak American Medical Directory GENERA HOSPITAL Per 1,000 p 1940 Source: Journal America paper, the Southern Patriot, which I wish to submit now for the record of the hearings. (The May issue of the Southern Patriot was introduced for the information of the committee.) (The matter referred to is as follows:) [From the Southern Patriot, Nashville, Tenn., May 1945] These charts tell only part of a sad and shocking story-a story of sickness and bad health the South and the Nation can ill afford. This issue of the Southern Patriot is devoted to a study of health in the South. We present first the symptoms-the facts and figures of our state of health; next, a diagnosis-a picture of the poverty that lies behind our illness; and then a prescription, based on the studies of Senator Pepper's Committee on Wartime Health and Education, and the North Carolina Governor's Commission on Hospital and Medical Care. A happy and prosperous South depends in the very first instance on a healthy people. We must not forget that this problem must be studied, tackled and solved if the people of our region are to play their rightful part in building a new South and a peaceful world. One of every two southern youth-in the prime of life-is unable to meet the minimum physical and mental requirements for military service. While the rest of the Nation furnished 65 eligible soldiers from every 100 men examined, the Southern States averaged only 49.6, a 40-percent increase of IV-F'ers in the South. These figures, released by Selective Service, and depicted State by State in the accompanying map, point accusingly to the health standards of the entire southern people. Many of the diseases which disqualify our young men as soldiers account, too, for the unusually high death rates in the South. Tuberculosis, for example, caused 45.9 of 100,000 deaths in the Nation as a whole in 1940, but in the Southeast, the figure was 56 deaths and in the Southwest, 631. There were 110 counties, or 17.8 percent of the counties in the Southeast, which |