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American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 26, 2025
Entity authorityQ16152329 ↗
Source-derived summary

The American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality (AASPIM) was one of the first organizations to begin investigating infant mortality rates in terms of eugenics. They promoted government intervention in attempts to promote the health of future citizens.

The AASPIM was founded at a November 1909 conference on the prevention of infant mortality, held in New Haven, Connecticut, by the American Association of Medicine (AAM). Its first annual meeting took place at Johns Hopkins University in November 1910. Subsequent meetings continued annually.

Luther Emmett Holt, in his 1913 presidential address to the AASPIM members, opposed the opinion that lowering infant mortality might help genetically unfit individuals to survive and thereby affect the nation's strength. In contrast, he held the position that

We must eliminate the unfit by birth not by death. The race is to be most effectively improved by preventing marriage and reproduction by the unfit, among whom we would class the diseased, the degenerate, the defective, and the criminal.

See also

Eugenics in the United States

References

Bibliography

Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 ISBN 0801838797; Univ.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through American, Association and Study, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1909, 1910, 1913, 1850—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, American, Association and Study is the immediate research focus.
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This entry incorporates text from “American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.