A history of public health.

Looking back for the future

“…A sanitary engineering approach based on corrective and remedial measures was effective in removing unsanitary conditions by demolishing buildings, and reconstructing neighbourhoods with infrastructure and services in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Rosen 1993). The sanitary reform movement resulted in improvements to the health status of urban populations by corrective and remedial measures.…”

“…The Miasma theory was replaced by the germ theory (Rosen 1993). The latter specified that specific agents including water transmit infectious diseases.…”

Three challenges for the social determinants of health pursuit

“…This is not the place to review ancient texts of Babylonia and Greece, rather to consider that even within the sphere of public health this is an old story. 1 …”

“…This is not the place to review ancient texts of Babylonia and Greece, rather to consider that even within the sphere of public health this is an old story. 1 The idea that the health of populations is affected by and is a product of the social determinants in the population is not only an old belief, even perhaps an accepted truth, dates certainly from the work of the haberdasher John Graunt 4 Throughout the 20 th Century thoughtful work in the area of sociocultural factors in health illness continued, particularly in the fields of medical sociology and social medicine; the bulk of this large literature simply reinforced the "accepted truth" that linked social context to health-related outcomes. 5 More recently we have the extensive work of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants.…”

Mixing EU Security and Public Health Expertise in the Health Threats Decision

“…21 Prior, communicable disease epidemics were largely seen as exogenous, unpredictable or as 'Acts of God'.…”