The People's Health

by Lewis, Milton James

• ISBN13: 9780313325953
• ISBN10: 0313325952
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-30
• Publisher: Praeger Pub Text

Summary

This second volume on the history of public health in Australia completes the story of the conception and evolution of medicine in the island nation. Whereas volume one details the period from 1788 when Europeans first settled on the east coast of the island until just after World War II, this book carries the story to the end of the twentieth century with the notion of a social view of public health. While health care in the first era was characterized by a focus on disease and mortality patterns very much shaped by communicable diseases, the second period was marked by the need to respond to chronic, "degenerative" diseases of an aging population, along with "emerging" infections, in particular HIV/AIDS. Recent years have also seen the emergence of new concerns such as genetically-modified foods and the role of public health in response to bioterrorism. Themes developed in volume one continue to play a major role in recent health care policy, in particular comparisons with public health in the United Kingdom and the United States. The problematic relationship between public health and clinical medicine and the small resources flowing to public health in comparison to those allocated to curative and rehabilitative services continue to be areas of concern. Many politicians and citizens have yet to come to terms fully with the changes required by thinking of health advancement in terms of the interaction of the biological and social nature of humankind.

Table of Contents

Tables	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
The Emergence of Public Health in Europe and America	1	(14)
Health and Disease in a New World	15	(26)
The Sanitary Revolution: Public Health, 1850--1900	41	(76)
New Directions in Public Health?	117	(62)
The Health System in the Interwar Years	179	(68)
A National Health Service, 1939--49?	247	(28)
The Health System at Midcentury	275	(10)
Selected Bibliography	285	(2)
Index	287	(44)
Tables	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
Toward a Social Conception of Health	1	(12)
The Health Problems of Affluence	13	(88)
The Concept of Community Health	101	(44)
The New Public Health: Promise and Performance	145	(66)
Public Health and Social Justice	211	(68)
At the Beginning of the New Millennium, Whither Public Health?	279	(52)
Selected Bibliography	331	(2)
Index	333