Celebrating the legacy of our first pediatrician

Physician Robert E. Hannemann was the first pediatrician on the IU Health Arnett team (still operating independently as Arnett Clinic at the time). Shared in remembrance of his life and legacy, this story is an excerpt from “Compassion & Community: Celebrating the 100-year legacy of Indiana University Health Arnett.”

A trip to Tippecanoe County with a friend, led Dr. Robert E. Hannemann to start a pediatric department at Arnett Clinic. Just a year out of medical school at Indiana University, Hannemann accompanied a friend to a meeting with the Tippecanoe County Medical Society. There, Hannemann learned that Arnett Clinic was about to open a pediatric department. He was interested, and in 1962 Hannemann signed on as the Clinic’s first pediatrician.

Soon after, Hannemann was involved in starting the first Head Start program in Lafayette. Head Start promotes the school readiness of infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children from low-income families with a variety of services. He eventually served as regional consultant for the Midwest Head Start program.

Throughout his career, Hannemann helped the Greater Lafayette community. He provided free physical examinations for the Boys & Girls Club of Lafayette. In 1973, he was president of the Tippecanoe County Medical Society where he helped establish the Health Referral Center, the forerunner of the Community Health Clinic. For more than 40 years he volunteered as a medical consultant for Cary Home for Children. He served as team physician for Lafayette Jefferson High School and, later, Harrison High School.

Hannemann was the medical consultant and member of the editorial staff of Growing Child, the first child development newsletter in the United States, created by Dunn & Hargitt, the publisher of The Lafayette Leader. He was a national and regional leader in his field. He was elected vice president of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1995, and president the following year. His appointment marked the first time an Indiana physician had led the national group.

He authored a pocket parent guide for child health and was associate medical editor for the best-selling book, Caring for Your Baby and Your Child: Birth to Age Five. In the late 1990s, Hannemann was president of the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He also served on the National Secretary for Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on infant mortality. A man of many firsts, who enthusiastically cared for children, Hannemann professed in a 1998 Lafayette Leader story that “pediatrics is an upbeat profession.” He retired from Arnett Clinic in 2000.

His obituary can be read online.