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The nature of the relationship between publics and their health has long been a concern for those seeking to improve collective and individual health. Attempts to secure the health of the population of any given place are one of the oldest forms of governmental action. Whether it be providing clean water or preventing the spread of disease, such efforts require the involvement of the publics these measures are designed to protect. Despite its importance, surprisingly little attention has been paid to who or what the ‘public’ of public health consisted of. This collection addresses this gap by considering ‘who’ the public of public health was in an array of places and around a variety of public health problems. Ranging across Europe and North and South America, and from the interwar period to the near present, this book explores the construction of ‘problem publics’ to deepen our understanding of the ‘who’ of public health. This book offers detailed case studies of the making of ‘problem’ publics and public health problems in different places and at different times. By placing examples of the construction of problem publics in contexts as diverse as the USA in the interwar period, East Germany in the 1980s and contemporary Argentina, this collection identifies what is general and what is specific to the processes that make certain kinds of publics appear problematic. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, this volume offers fresh insights into the nature of public health problems, practices and publics.
-five before 1945). To their intense frustration most found that, although their training was only a year short of the full medical degree, they were confined to the humblest of tasks. The scheme failed to provide the large cadre of rural health workers envisaged by the Department of Health, and Gale, concerned with its legal anomalies and sympathetic to African dissatisfaction, rapidly found himself out of tune with his Fort
diseases; laboratory services; protection of health in maternity, infancy and childhood; and public health education. In 1927, CAP extended this with ‘An Appraisal Form for Rural Health Service’. At the time, four out of five rural counties in the US lacked any form of full-time health service; many did not even have a part-time health officer. 23 Despite great differences in population density, geography
promotion of rural health services. The protagonists of this heated debate, which started around the end of the Second World War, were the so-called Native Authorities and the political administration on the one side, with the government’s medical department on the other. The new appointment of Paul Arthur Theodore Sneath as Director of Medical Services in 1945 marked the beginning of
of early public health nurses reminds us that we must broaden rather than narrow our focus when developing and evaluating public health efforts, past, present and future. Notes 1 The standard historical analysis of this topic remains K. B. Wilkerson, False Dawn: The Rise and Decline of Public Health Nursing, 1900–1930 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989). For more on rural health, see M. R. Grey, New Deal Medicine: The Rural Health Programs of the Farm Security Administration (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 2 For more on the history of
and vegetable gardens, etc. The plans envisaged the large-scale mobilization of voluntary labour, and nothing short of a change in attitudes and aspirations on the part of the villagers – the rise of expectations of healthy life. The comparative frame of mind, the widened awareness of other ways and other places, was evident: ‘in China it has been demonstrated that even a few weeks’ training, provided it is intensive, can be sufficient to produce efficient Bayly 05_Tonra 01 21/06/2011 10:22 Page 133 Health in India since independence workers for rural health
, discussed in Chapter 6), but also the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the National Rural Health Mission. Campaigns oriented around these public programmes are arguably where the JMS most directly takes up class-based issues. More direct contestation was made difficult by the prevailing balance of class forces. In challenging LGIs, the 153 154 Labour, state and society in rural India social movement faced a dominant class whose influence was relatively undiminished despite the growth of circular migration out of the area (see Chapter 4). The JMS, then, is
indirect state-oriented forms of class struggle remain more prominent.13 50 Labour, state and society in rural India The latter type of organisation tends to focus its attention on LGIs and their implementation of key government programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the National Rural Health Mission and the Public Distribution System (PDS). These small social movements in the Indian countryside, such as the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghathan (MKSS) in Rajasthan, the Grameen Coolie Karmikara Sanghathan (GCKS) (Village Workers
featured among the primary beneficiaries of these rural health walks programmes. Older adults are a particularly important demographic in the context of rural nature-based health interventions given the ageing profile of rural residents across Europe, driven largely by out-migration of young people, in-migration of people in mid-life who then age in place, and in-migration of people at or around
revitalise the scheme. Mandel proved a worthy champion of colonial health care reformers. He endorsed an increase in AOF’s public health budget from 100 million to 146 million francs in 1939. In line with Moutet’s original plans, the increased funding was channelled into rural health care, much of it specifically aimed at women, both as nursing staff and rural health care providers, and