Video: 'History of the March of Dimes' (12 videos)

(Monday, January 3, 1938) — The March of Dimes, a U.S. nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality, was established today by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

Roosevelt was himself diagnosed with polio in 1921, although his symptoms are now known to be more consistent with Guillain–Barré syndrome, an autoimmune neuropathy which Roosevelt’s doctors failed to consider as a diagnostic possibility.