1. Public Health Movement
Trattner chapter 7

2. Early Views of Cause of Disease
Result of God’s 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