Shifting boundaries of public health : Europe in the twentieth century / edited by Susan Gross Solomon, Lion Murard, and Patrick Zylberman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Solomon, Susan Gross.

Murard, Lion.

Zylberman, Patrick.

Series:

Rochester studies in medical history 1526-2715

Rochester studies in medical history, 1526-2715

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public health--Europe--History--20th century.

Public health.

History, 20th Century.

History.

Europe.

Public Health--history.

Medical Subjects:

History, 20th Century.

Europe.

Public Health--history.

Physical Description:

viii, 338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2008.

Summary:

European public health was a playing field for deeply contradictory impulses throughout the twentieth century. In the 1920s, international agencies were established with great fanfare and post-war optimism to serve as the watch tower of health the world over. Within less than a decade, local level institutions began to emerge as seats of innovation, initiative, and expertise. But there was continual counter pressure from nation states that jealously guarded their policy-making prerogatives in the face of the push for cross-national standardization and the emergence of original initiatives from below.

In contrast to histories of twentieth century public health that focus exclusively on the local, national, or international levels, Shifting Boundaries explores the connections or "zones of contact" between the three levels. The interpretive essays, written by distinguished historians of public health and medicine, focus on four topics: the oscillation between governmental and non-governmental (public) agencies as sites of responsibility for addressing public health problems; the harmonization of nation states' agendas with those of international agencies; the development by public health experts of knowledge that is both placeless and respectful of place; and the transportability of model solutions across borders. The volume breaks new ground in its treatment of public health as a political endeavor by highlighting strategies to prevent or alleviate disease as a matter not simply of medical techniques, but of political values and commitments.

Contents:

Can there be a democratic public health? fighting AIDS in the industrialized world / Peter Baldwin

The social contract of health in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries : individuals, corporations, and the state / Dorothy Porter

American foundations and the internationalizing of public health / Paul Weindling

Maneuvering for space : international health work of the League of Nations during World War II / Iris Borowy

Europe, America, and the space of international health / James A. Gillespie

Designs within disorder : international conferences on rural health care and the art of the local, 1931-39 / Lion Murard

Contested spaces : models of public health in occupied Germany / Sabine Schleiermacher

British public health and the problem of local demographic structure / Graham Mooney

A matter of "reach" : fact-finding in public health in the wake of World War I / Susan Gross Solomon

A transatlantic dispute : the etiology of malaria and the redesign of the Mediterranean landscape / Patrick Zylberman.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-322) and index.

ISBN:

9781580462839

1580462839

OCLC:

176925293