For a time, the agency oversaw food and drug safety, education funding, administration of public health programs, and the Social Security old-age pension plan.

The Public Health Service was in charge of protecting both the general population and military personnel against epidemics and carrying out medical research.

When the war ended, President Truman moved to "strengthen the arm of the federal government for better integration of services in the fields of health, education, and welfare.

The plan transferred the Children's Bureau (created in 1912), exclusive of its Industrial Division, from the Department of Labor into SSA; the US Employees Compensation Commission, formerly an independent organization, to the Office of the Administrator of FSA; functions of the Department of Commerce regarding vital statistics to the Public Health Service.

Previous to the consolidation, constituent agencies were maintaining five and, in some cases, six independent regional offices in a single city.

Nearly 6,000 representatives of 100,000 local and community groups throughout the country met to discuss the "spiritual values, democratic practice, and the dignity and worth of the individual."

In August of that year, a Conference on Aging was called by the FSA Administrator to study the needs and problems of the older segment of the population.

The FDA continued to study chemical and bacteriological warfare agents but other FSA components were mobilized to provide disaster relief and health care assistance to a number of foreign countries.

Technical assistance, under the federal "Point IV" and Mutual Security Agency programs, provided needed help to many underdeveloped countries.

The Agency also furnished guidance for foreign representatives sent to this country to study American programs and methods in the fields of health and education.

[2] President Harry S. Truman attempted to make the FSA a department of the federal government, but this legislation was defeated.

[4] By 1953, the Federal Security Agency's programs in health, education, and social security had grown to such importance that its annual budget exceeded the combined budgets of the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Labor and Interior and affected the lives of millions of people.

The result is that HHS is the only executive department whose statutory foundation today rests on a confusing combination of several codified and uncodified statutes.