Introduction to the Symposium on Global Climate and Health

Our association was conceived by a small group of physicians interested in tuberculosis and health spas 125 years ago last month in New York City. They organized the “American Climatological Association,” to study the effect of climate on disease and planned the first meeting to take place in Washington, D.C. on May 3, 1884. So next year, 2009, will be the 125^th Anniversary of our first Annual Meeting.

Seventy-five years ago the council questioned the relevance of Climatology to Clinical Medicine, yet in renaming our Association decided, for historic and sentimental reasons, to retain the “Climatologic” designation, and in 1933 we became the “American Clinical and Climatological Association.” Now, of course, we seem to be ahead of our time in having recognized that Global Climate has a monumental effect on Human Health.

So we are fortunate that Dr. Donald Lindberg submitted to me for consideration for this meeting a short essay on the topic. This essay evolved into my charging him to organize the first Symposium for our Association on Global Climate and Health which he entitled The Second 125 Years of the ACCA: Shall We Return to Our Roots?

Ladies and gentlemen I give you Dr. Donald Lindberg, a pioneering physician-scientist in applying computer technology to health care, and Director since 1984 of the National Library of Medicine, the world's largest biomedical library. Joining him for the symposium are Guillaume Constantin de Magny of the University of Maryland, George Luber of the Centers for Disease Control, and Joshua P. Rosenthal of the National Institutes of Health.