234010 Exodus of Public Health: What History Can Tell Us About the Future

Monday, November 8, 2010 : 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM

Amy Fairchild, PhD, MPH , Sociomedical Sciences, Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY
I trace the shifting definitions of the American public health profession's mission as a social reform and science-based endeavor. Its authority coalesced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as public health identified itself with housing, sanitation, and labor reform efforts. The field ceded that authority to medicine and other professions as it jettisoned its social mission in favor of a science-based identity. Understanding the potential for achieving progressive social change as it moves forward will require careful consideration of the industrial, structural, and intellectual forces that oppose radical reform and the identification of constituencies with which professionals can align to bring science to bear on the most pressing challenges of the day.

Learning Areas:
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Describe the role of social reform in the historical success of public health. Demonstrate the limits of science in achieving social in achieving social change and public health reform. Identify key moments in the history of public health that illuminate potential policy strategy for the future.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a historian researching the broad social forces that produce disease and shape public health policy and a public health policy analyst focused on dilemmas in the ethics and politics of contemporary debates. Guided by the understanding that history and policy do not simply represent two different worlds, she fuses these frameworks of analysis, crafting a new, historically grounded way of thinking critically about problems in a professional field. My work's central intellectual theme has been to explore the functions and limits of the State, particularly when it seeks to address health issues that touch on groups marginalized by virtue of disease, class, and race.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.