Elizabeth Fee

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | HHS · National Institutes of Health (NIH)

According to its Constitution, the mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) was nothing less than the 'attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health' without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic status, or social condition. But how consistently and how well has the WHO pursued this mission since 1946?...

In June 2001, the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) published its first issue devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) health issues. In that issue, Emilia Lombardi presented a powerful case for greater understanding, greatly increased research, and appropriate services for the transgender population. Lombardi began by disent...

The process to elect the next director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has already been under way for several months. The 194 member countries can nominate candidates; the formal voting takes place at the World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 2017, and the new director-general will take office in July. Past ele...

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) leadership challenges can be traced to its first decades of existence. Central to its governance and practice is regionalization: the division of its member countries into regions, each representing 1 geographical or cultural area. The particular composition of each region has varied over time—reflecting poli...

The adoption of the Declaration of Alma-Ata in September 1978 was one of the shining moments in public health history. It was the occasion for the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund, and the 134 signatory nations to declare the goal of "Health for All by 2000" along with strong associated commitments to "development...

Mary Steichen Calderone, MD, MPH, was the foremost advocate for sex education in the United States during the pivotal decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Calderone served as medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1953 to 1964 and as principal founder, executive director, and, after 1975, president of the Sex Education and...

The American Lung Association created this colorful poster as part of its environmental health education program in the 1980s. In the distance, factories and power plants are belching out toxic smoke. The boat on the river, possibly an oil tanker, is adding to the pollution; so is the fire burning on the left of the image. Cars on the road are emit...

John H. Landis of Cincinnati, Ohio, one of the most dedicated public health officers in the country, was appointed as the city's health officer in 1910. He promptly reorganized the health department; established effective supervision of dairies, markets, grocery stores, and restaurants; began studies of industrial hygiene; initiated sanitary inspec...

Mervyn Susser, MB, Bch, FRCP(E), DPH, was one of the towering figures of epidemiology in the 20th century.(1) From the start, he drew attention to the interrelationships between health, disease, and social injustice. His influence extended to the foundations of life course epidemiology, genetic epidemiology, and global health (later including HIV/A...

THIS PUBLICATION OF THE World Health Organization's (WHO's) Alma-Ata Declaration, endorsed by representatives of 134 member states in September 1978, is its second appearance in the pages of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH). The Alma-Ata Declaration's stirring and comprehensive statement of the ideals of global health justice was first...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, anemia was the principal cause of death in Puerto Rico. At that time, the disease was understood to be a rural health problem-whereas the mortality rate was 1 in 1000 people in the urbanized, coastal area of Ponce, it was 32 in 1000 in Adjuntas, a coffee-farming mountainous region.(1) The Sanitation Board...

The famous nursing leader, M. Adelaide Nutting, said that Lavinia Dock was the "most noble, most unselfish, most largely helpful of women, a student, a scholar, in many ways the greatest spirit that has ever moved in our midst."(1) Dock came from a prominent and wealthy Pennsylvania family and, with an income from inherited property, had no need to...

Prior to the founding of the World Health Organization following World War II, the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO), created after World War I as an integral part of the League of Nations, was the international health agency with the broadest mandate, clearest vision, and most universally recognized legitimacy.(1) Under the inspiring le...

In this excerpted report published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the League of Nations Health Organisation (LNHO) in 1932, the Medical Director of the LNHO provided a vivid account of disastrous recent floods in China and their massive social and health consequences. The Medical Director was Ludwik Rajchman, who had been head of LNHO since late 1921...

Most public health practitioners know that public health has relied on biomedical advances and administrative improvements, but it is less commonly understood that social movements in health have also been sources of motivation for population health advances. This review considers the impacts of social movements focused on urban conditions and heal...

This Acrylic Painting, The Stigma of HIV, by Lou Storey, an artist, designer, and clinical social worker, connects the fear of HIV/AIDS to the stigma it engenders. In other words, the root of stigma is fear. Superimposed on the concentric circles linking these concepts is the coiled structure of the double helix. The double helix is used to represe...

This colorful poster of a mother holding up her baby daughter against the blue sky projects an ideal image of a strong mother, freed from the exhaustion of caring for many children, including the burden of housework for a large family. With one child, she can concentrate her time and energy on raising the child and playing an active role in the eco...

MeckelRichard A., Save the babies: American public health reform and the prevention of infant mortality, 1850–1929, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, 8vo, pp. xi, 302, illus., £30.50, $42.50. - Volume 35 Issue 3 - Elizabeth Fee

RAYMOND B. FOSDICK, WHO would serve as the President of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1936 to 1948, was a lifetime disciple of Woodrow Wilson. His family was not wealthy but managed to scrape up enough money to send him to Princeton University. There he met Wilson, at that time president of the university, later to become the president of the Uni...

Ludwig Teleky was a major international figure in early twentieth century social and occupational medicine, admired for his scientific accomplishments, legislative and regulatory achievements, and progressive political views.(1) He published some 350 papers, monographs, and books and cofounded an important journal, Archiv für Gewerbepathologie und...

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LEONA BAUMGARTNER BROKE many barriers. In 1954, she was the first woman ever to hold the post of Commissioner of Public Health in New York City. In 1959, she became the second female president of the American Public Health Association. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy appointed her to head the Office of Technical Cooperation and Research in the n...

We thank Tulchinsky for commenting on and for expanding the discussion of Natan Goldblum's contributions. We are aware that he was involved in many important projects, such as the one Tulchinsky mentions, but because of space limitations, we had to focus on only one aspect of his work—the first steps in producing the inactivated poliomyelitis vacci...

At the age of three, he accidentally blinded himself in one eye with a stitching awl taken from his father's leather workshop. His other eye went blind because of sympathetic ophthal-mia, an inflammation of both eyes following trauma to one. 1 When he was 15, he invented a universal system for reading and writing to be used by people who are blind...

Este artículo estudia el proceso médico y político de surgimiento de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), la principal agencia multilateral de salud, formalmente fundada en 1948 y ligada a la recientemente creada Organización de las Naciones Unidas. Este proceso se inició hacia el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en 1945, cuando Estados Un...

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE WAS born of wealthy parents who expected her to do all the things young ladies of her class did: to spend much of her time in the drawing room entertaining her sister or her friends; to take occasional rides in carriages, to visit others; to appear at parties and dinners; and to be occupied with embroidery, playing the piano, a...

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS was an American writer and muckraker. The muckrakers (a term coined by President Theodore Roosevelt) were writers of the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century who exposed the corruption of businesses or government to the public. Often accused of being socialists or communists, they played a significant role in soc...

JULES SCHEVITZ WAS A brilliant young man who died at the age of 24, at the very beginning of a most promising career. At the age of 20, the young man was appointed general secretary of the Oklahoma Public Health Association where, as described in the extract, he proceeded to build a remarkably effective public health and antituberculosis program. I...

IN 1805, THE NEZ PERCE Indians—so named by the French because they wore rings in their pierced noses–welcomed Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their band of bedraggled and hungry men into their homeland. One expedition member, Sergeant Gass, declared that the Nez Perces were the “most friendly, honest, and ingenious people that we have seen in...

ISAAC W. BREWER WAS BORN in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1867. He received his MD degree from Columbia University in 1897 and worked briefly as an assistant demonstrator of anatomy for the public schools of Washington, DC.1 He spent most of his medical career fighting infectious disease epidemics in American towns and rural areas. He served as heal...

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Many analysts have complained about the severe disconnect between public health as it is taught in schools of public health and public health as it is practiced in health departments. At least in the United States, few faculty members teaching in schools of public health have ever worked in public health departments. By the same token, few of those...

Many analysts have complained about the severe disconnect between public health as it is taught in schools of public health and public health as it is practiced in health departments. At least in the United States, few faculty members teaching in schools of public health have ever worked in public health departments. By the same token, few of those...

Not a single death was reported in the Jewish community. During and after the flooding, community leaders immediately organized the delivery of bread and water to families in need, physicians made rounds by boat, and Betar, the Jewish youth organization, moved Jews living in flooded areas to the synagogue and the cemetery, both located on high grou...

The early association of HIV/AIDS with marginal groups - homosexuals and IV drug users - structured social and political responses to the disease. Many countries began to enact restrictive travel policies and to contemplate compulsory testing or quarantine for those infected. In Africa, Jonathan Mann became convinced that the disease was heterosexu...

WHEN WE THINK OF THE WORLD Health Organization (WHO), a number of dramatic moments and milestones leap to mind: the launching of the new international health organization in 1948 with the stirring preamble to its constitution; the visionary Alma Ata Declaration of 1978; the announcement in 1980 of the eradication of smallpox, the first disease to b...

JOHN B. GRANT WAS BORN to Canadian medical missionaries in Ningbo, China, in 1890. He graduated from Acadia College in Nova Scotia in 1912 and received his medical education at University of Michigan and his public health degree from the Johns Hopkins University. He would later often refer to Arthur Newsholme and Victor C. Vaughan (his professors i...

THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF Mohandas K. Gandhi (October 2, 1869–January 30, 1948), dressed only in a loincloth and working at his spinning wheel on the deck of the SS Rajputana, was taken in 1931 as Gandhi traveled to London to attend a high-level roundtable conference with British officials.1 Gandhi was leader of the Indian National Congress and the major...

This volume examines the wide-ranging careers and diverse lives of American women physicians, shedding light on their struggles for equality, professional accomplishment, and personal happiness over the past 150 years. Leading scholars in the history of medicine chronicle the trials and triumphs of such extraordinary women as Marie Zakrzewska, one...

This section looks back to some groundbreaking contributions to public health, reproducing them in their original form and adding a commentary on their significance from a modern-day perspective. Elizabeth Fee and Liping Bu review WH Welch and W Rose's Institute of Hygiene of the early 20th century to help us consider the choices and options for th...

The Hippocratic physicians were among the first who described jaundice (icterus). The Hippocratic Corpus has numerous appearances of the condition, where its etiology, description, prognosis, and treatment are provided. The connection made between the liver and jaundice was remarkable, bearing in mind that the Hippocratic physicians had not perform...

Even a quick glance at the titles of books and articles in recent medical and public health literature suggests that an important transition is underway. The terms ‘global’, ‘globalization’, and their variants are everywhere, and in the specific context of international public health, ‘global’ seems to be emerging as the preferred authoritative ter...