Public Health Movement

1
Public Health Movement

• Trattner chapter 7

2
Early Views of Cause of Disease

• Result of Gods punishment for sin and could be
  cured by more moral behavior
• Result of dirt and filth and could be cured by
  more clean or sanitary environments

3
Sanitary Movement

• Influenced by similar efforts in England
• U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War
• 1866 New York Metropolitan Health Law
• 1872 American Public Health Association
• These groups were opposed because cleaning up
  slums would cost tax money, and rich people owned
  and profited by slum dwellings

4
Discovery of Germs

• Came in 1880s and 1890s
• Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch
• Found causes of disease in germs typhoid,
  leprosy, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera,
  diphtheria, tetanus, bubonic plague, dysentery
• Personal factor in contagion

5
Public Health Movement

• Importance of education
• Involvement of social workers
• Richard Cabot hired social workers in 1905 at
  Massachusetts General Hospital
• Linkage of disease and poverty

6
Fight Against Tuberculosis

• Wasting disease that attacked lungs
• Killer of those between 15-44
• Spread through contagion and thus through
  families and close contact
• Studies done in early 1900s by Charity
  Organization Societies
• Educational campaigns emphasizing prevention

7

• Antithesis of Social Darwinism
• Disease considered a disgrace, but laws for
  mandatory reporting instituted
• Hospitals instituted because of futility of home
  treatment
• New York developed publicly funded hospitals
• Sanitariums also developed

8
Public Health Approach

• Has moved on to control of other infectious
  diseases diphtheria, venereal diseases, AIDS
• Environmental health
• Well baby clinics
• Prenatal care
• Aims at broad population health