scholarly journals PUBLIC HEALTH AT THE MOUTH OF THE DANUBE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Author(s):  
Alexandru DRĂGHICI ◽  

This paper analyzes the European Commission of the Danube (ECD) attempt to provide its sanitary vision, on a modern basis, in an unhealthy area. The need to impose a public health policy at the mouth of the Danube was given by Sulina's position as the gateway to Europe, subject to intense transit that brought with it mobility of the disease. Doctors Jellinek, Vignard, Petrescu Hagi Stoica, were some of the pillars that formed the basis of the formation of this health policy, which through their work and observations, made Sulina has known worldwide, not only in commercial importance but also in health. The epidemic waves, but also the doctors' findings, led to the construction of adequate medical facilities. Starting with 1878, after the involvement of the Romanian authorities, combining the social model with the medical one, a series of measures are adopted, which confers a new dimension of public health at the mouth of the Danube

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orla O'Donovan ◽  
Dympna Casey

This paper examines consumerism in public health policy and focuses on a specific strategy to make Irish hospital services more consumer-oriented, namely, patients' charters. The first part of the paper examines different conceptualisations of the ‘new consumerism’ in the social policy literature and locates its emergence within the broader context of the ‘marketisation’ of the welfare state. A brief review of the literature on the merits and limitations of public sector consumerism is then presented. The second part of the paper concentrates on the emergence of the new consumerism in Irish public health policy, and the results of a study that examined the implementation of the Charter of Rights for Hospital Patients are presented. A key finding of the study was that none of the hospitals in the study area had fully implemented the provisions of the Charter. Furthermore, only 26 per cent of a sample of one hundred hospital patients had heard of the Charter and only 10 per cent could recall any of the rights that it conferred on patients. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Charter of Rights for Hospital Patients is less concerned with empowering patients than it is with other agendas, such as creating a semblance of closeness to the users of health services and counterbalancing medical authority.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (20_suppl) ◽  
pp. 47-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Fosse ◽  
M.K. Helgesen ◽  
S. Hagen ◽  
S. Torp

Aims: The gradient in health inequalities reflects a relationship between health and social circumstance, demonstrating that health worsens as you move down the socio-economic scale. For more than a decade, the Norwegian National government has developed policies to reduce social inequalities in health by levelling the social gradient. The adoption of the Public Health Act in 2012 was a further movement towards a comprehensive policy. The main aim of the act is to reduce social health inequalities by adopting a Health in All Policies approach. The municipalities are regarded key in the implementation of the act. The SODEMIFA project aimed to study the development of the new public health policy, with a particular emphasis on its implementation in municipalities. Methods: In the SODEMIFA project, a mixed-methods approach was applied, and the data consisted of surveys as well as qualitative interviews. The informants were policymakers at the national and local level. Results: Our findings indicate that the municipalities had a rather vague understanding of the concept of health inequalities, and even more so, the concept of the social gradient in health. The most common understanding was that policy to reduce social inequalities concerned disadvantaged groups. Accordingly, policies and measures would be directed at these groups, rather than addressing the social gradient. Conclusions: A movement towards an increased understanding and adoption of the new, comprehensive public health policy was observed. However, to continue this process, both local and national levels must stay committed to the principles of the act.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Lohse ◽  
Stefano Canali

AbstractIn this paper, we use the case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe to address the question of what kind of knowledge we should incorporate into public health policy. We show that policy-making during the COVID-19 pandemic has been biomedicine-centric in that its evidential basis marginalised input from non-biomedical disciplines. We then argue that in particular the social sciences could contribute essential expertise and evidence to public health policy in times of biomedical emergencies and that we should thus strive for a tighter integration of the social sciences in future evidence-based policy-making. This demand faces challenges on different levels, which we identify and discuss as potential inhibitors for a more pluralistic evidential basis.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. A36-A36
Author(s):  
Student

[In a recent] report, one of the signatories ... apparently having second or third thoughts considered the evidence "falls far short of proof"—an implication that we can measure distance from an absolute called proof. This lust for "absolute" proof represents a view of science that is mistaken, dangerously so, since it interferes with two types of endeavour: translating scientific evidence into public health policy and pursuing research into the social causation of illhealth.


Author(s):  
Megan Coyer

This chapter examines the construction of the ‘political medicine’ of William Pulteney Alison (1790–1859) and Robert Gooch (1784–1830) and its development and popular dissemination through Blackwood’s. This humanistic ‘political medicine’ critiqued liberal political economists and utilitarianism and promoted the importance of moral feelings and Christian sentiments in informing public health policy. Alison’s contribution to the debates regarding poor law reform and Gooch’s proposal for a religious order of nurses – a project supported by his friend Robert Southey – are discussed as components within a progressive Tory social medicine. By way of contrast, the chapter closes with an examination of Robert Ferguson (1799–1865), the key medical contributor to the Quarterly Review from 1829 to 1854. Although Ferguson also contributed to what David Roberts terms ‘the social conscience of Tory periodicals’, writing on issues relevant to public health and promoting a paternalistic approach, his writings more clearly reflect the counter-revolutionary agenda of the Quarterly, as opposed to the more explicit humanism of Blackwood’s.


1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl J. Murdock

AbstractThis study of public health policy in Chile uncovers some of the social tensions in that country during the 1880s, and illustrates the fragmentation of the Chilean elite prior to the Revolution of 1891. The Chilean government's controversial and contested public health policies implied the increasing bureaucratic organisation and regulation of society. The justifications offered for these policies by central government officials reveal both the deep roots in Chilean politics of a powerful Executive, and the early linkage between the ‘scientific discourses’ of medical professionals and the bureaucratic centralisation of state power.


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