ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a departure from text through its reliance on personal reminiscence. America's great Foundations have typically sought to identify and then to assist in solving various problem areas that beset the nation. The Health Program, thus, became a significant component of the Foundation's portfolio. The Foundation has been fortunate in its choices of the three officers who since 1979 had successive responsibility for the direction of that program and the shaping of its structure and contents. For developmentalists, whatever their scientific identity, the Foundation's dedication to the support of research on life-span adaptation has been a significant contribution toward providing a mounting body of evidence that interdisciplinary collaboration in studying lives over time is a significant and reachable scientific goal. The Health Program of the MacArthur Foundation includes the aforementioned schema of Networks that reflect the developmental progression over the life-cycle from early childhood to old age.
