A survey of local public health departments and their directors

In 1974 a questionnaire was mailed to the nation's local health officers. Responses were received from 1,345, at least 68 per cent of all local health departments. The present paper presents selected summary data from respondents concerning the health departments, their jurisdictions, organization, finance, functions, staffing, and about the training, salaries, and other characteristics of local health officers. Health departments are extensively involved in rendering health services, including direct personal services (25 per cent of all departments). For many services the health department is the sole provider of essential services in the area of jurisdiction. These services include ambulatory care (8 per cent), maternal and child health (48.5 per cent), home care (44.8 per cent), and family planning (38 per cent). The major constraints to improvement and expansion of programs are perceived as limited financial support, insufficient staff, and inadequate facilities.     

Psychology, mental health, and the public interest.

Discusses existing similarities and differences in the situations of practitioners and academicians. Professional associations have increasingly offered the practitioner the career and status supports that academic settings have offered their faculties. Whereas tenure supports academic freedom, guarantees of third-party reimbursement support professional freedom. Both obviously establish financial security. Despite the seemingly self-serving quest of the practitioner for professional autonomy, he or she has functioned no more according to the principle of self-interest than has the academician who has accepted and supported the precept to "publish or perish." If the major constraints on the functioning of both groups were significantly altered, mental health problems might be addressed more coherently and collaboratively. This would require renunciation of the unequivocal commitment to publishing, on the one hand, and realization of genuine professional autonomy, on the other. Substantive issues might then more often replace concerns with status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The concept and practice of education, research, and public service in university psychology departments.

The federal allocation of funds for basic behavioral research over the last five decades has deflected departments of psychology from the traditional social purpose of education and research toward a narrow value for grant-supported laboratory basic research, despite the fact that psychologists have contributed disproportionately to the research literature in applied disciplines. Although basis research and liberal arts education should be preserved and vigorously defended against current attacks, psychology departments should embrace to a greater extent quality applied scholarship, broaden the audience for their research and educational activities, and partner with colleagues from other disciplines and the community. If the purpose of education and scholarship-- to improve life---were pursued and valued more directly, a separate goal of public service might not be needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disability, health care, and public policy.

Efforts to persuade policymakers to rely on data to plan health care services for people with a disability or a chronic illness must confront the fact that many competing definitions of disability are currently used. It is important to recognize that pressures for standardization as well as disputes over disability definitions take place in a broader social and political context. Despite the practical difficulties facing researchers and the highly charged atmosphere in which disagreements over definitions must be managed, researchers have made progress in developing policy-relevant data that underline the importance of the health needs of people with a disability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Common mental disorders, depression and public health

Common Mental Disorders (CMD), particularly depressive disorders, are problems of public health importance and it would seem appropriate to approach them from a public health point of view. In this paper only psychosocial aspects are dealt with, because biological factors are less important in the pathogenesis of CMD. Although there are significant associations between socioeconomic variables and CMD, the association between poverty and CMD seems to be one of the most robust. There is good evidence that low income is associated with CMD, and this relationship may be causal. There is therefore a possibility that changes in social and economic policy that would reduce poverty might also reduce the prevalence of CMD. Future research should try to unravel the mechanisms and causal factors that underlie these common and disabling disorders.     

Maternal and child health in urban Sabah, Malaysia: a comparison of citizens and migrants

This paper describes selected maternal and child health indicators based on a cross-sectional study of citizens and migrants in Sabah, Malaysia. A total of 1,515 women were interviewed from a multi-stage random sample of households in eight urban centers. Among the 1,411 women in the sample who had experienced a pregnancy before, 76% were local citizens and 24% were migrants. There were statistically significant differences between citizens and migrants in ethnicity, religion, education, household income, and access to treated water supply and sanitary toilet facilities. Significantly fewer migrants practiced any form of contraception and obtained any antenatal care during any pregnancy. Furthermore, citizens tended to initiate care as early as three months but migrants as late as seven months. Despite these differences, only the infant mortality rate, and not pregnancy wastage, was statistically significantly higher among migrants. Pregnancy interval was also similar between the two groups. The influence of several socioeconomic factors on pregnancy wastage and infant mortality was explored.     

Changes in the activities, functions, and roles of public health educators

Accounts of early activities of public health educators, statements of the American Public Health Association on the qualifications and functions of these educators, and studies concerned with their responsbiliities, functions, work, or roles are reviewed. These point up the three major foci in public health education over time in the U.S., viz, dissemination of information, community organization, and health behavior and program planning. Functions of public health educators in emerging settings for practice are presented and the implications of this movement (i.e., movement of health educators into non-traditional settings) for public health education profession are discussed.     

Returns on investment in public health: effect of public health expenditures on infant health, 1983-1990

In this paper a number of methodological issues relating to research on the relationship between the menopause, mood and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are discussed. These issues relate to problems of design and statistical analyses, problems which have prevented the reaching of definite conclusions regarding the relationship between menopause, mood and hormones. These problems are discussed under three main headings, namely, the assessment of menopausal status, statistical modelling and the design and analyses of clinical trials. Problems relating to concepts and measurement of dependent variables are the subject matter of the papers that follow. Within the three main headings more specific issues are detailed. The paper concludes with a list of recommendations on how research in this important area might be further advanced.     

Social inequalities and health: the role played by local health departments in Germany

Social inequality in health is one of the most challenging of problems for all Public Health services. Health reports and the development of guidelines in this area are very demanding tasks. Based on the latest academic research on tackling inequalities in health, the article shows how two German cities, Potsdam and Hamburg, started to place inequality in children's health on the public agenda. With reference to research and public health policy in the Netherlands, the authors propose that the German local health departments develop similar methods of intervention in cooperation with all relevant partners in the health and social services.     

Behavioral change and public attitudes toward public health

One hundred patients suffering from recurrent acute tonsillitis were studied. One hundred tonsils were cultured. Surface bacteria were compared to deep bacteria. In 48 per cent of the cases a different pathogen was cultured from the interior of the tonsil as compared to the surface culture. This fact may explain recurrence of tonsillitis and makes the reliability of the conventional tonsillar culture questionable. Surgical extirpation of the tonsils seems to be the only treatment since deep bacteria remain unidentified and resist the antibiotic therapy that may affect only the surface microflora.