Society for Adolescent Medicine founded in 1968

The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAM, now SAHM) was founded in 1968 as one of the first organizations solely devoted to adolescent healthcare, from which NASPAG would eventually stem. SAHM is a multidisciplinary organization committed to improving the physical and psychosocial health and well-being of all adolescents. Important reproductive health issues at the time were adolescent pregnancy, birth control, abnormal Pap smears and reproductive endocrine disorders.

As I write this update from JPAG, Thanksgiving 2023 is in the rearview mirror.. As usual, my family gathered at our home, and there were adult kids, a grandchild, the outlaws (daughter-in-law’s parents), and friends who for various reasons will join our gathering. There was much to be grateful for this year, and Thanksgiving Day allows us the tradition of a day honoring gratitude. We are healthy, we have plenty, we are together. The bounty of our home garden once again supplied side dishes of spinach, lettuce, persimmons, apples, various fruit jams and jellies, pickled beets, pickled peppers, and even some tomatoes fresh from the vine. I’m grateful that hubby cooked the turkey. We live in beautiful California, where our Thanksgiving day included high temperatures near 70 degrees; we ate outside All reasons to give thanks. We are reminded by near-tragedies that we are grateful for the safety of relatives who lost their beautiful home and all their possessions this year to a wildfire.

Since 1986 there have been 35 Presidents, outstanding physicians and educators in their  fields: NASPAG Board of Directors History through 2025

Executive Directors

Albert Altcheck, MD, Ob/Gyn, New York. Executive Board, wrote a PAG textbook entitled, Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology; Comprehensive  Therapy – 1995.

The 1st annual clinical meeting of NASPAG was held at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, in Ohio in 1987. Dr. Gidwani served as the Program Chair.

Journal of Adolescent & Pediatric Gynecology - 1988-1996

The first PAG Fellowship in the USA was started at Boston Children’s Hospital by Dr. Donald Peter Goldstein in 1983.  Fellows included Drs. Odette Pinsonneault, Jacques Mailloux, Joan Wenning, Anne Davis, Karen Kozlowski, Lauren Brown, Linda Laras, Marc Laufer, Barbara Gardner and Barbara O’Connell. The Fellowship was discontinued in 1993 and was reestablished in 2018.

In the 2006 Bylaws Revision there were only 4 Committees - Publications, Program, Educational Development, and the Bylaws Committee. This current list of Committees exemplifies one of the many ways in which NASPAG has grown over the last 20 years. 

NASPAG, like many other major medical organizations, has been disheartened to see limitations placed on the provision of sexual health education to our youth. Comprehensive sexuality education has been shown to better prepare young persons to make informed and healthy decision about their sexual health and sexual health behaviors. In support of the provision of unrestricted, evidence based comprehensive sexual health education to our youth, the NASPAG Advocacy Committee has released a position statement.

1941 - First textbook of Pediatric Gynecology in the US by Goodrich Shauffler