The Emergence of a New Public Health Paradigm in the United States

Firearm violence is a major public health problem in the United States. In 2000, firearms were used in 10,801 homicides – two-thirds of all homicides in the U.S. – and 533,470 non-fatal criminal victimizations including rapes, robberies, and assaults. The social costs of gun violence in the United States are also staggering, and have been estimated to be on the order of $100 billion per year.Illegal gun carrying, usually concealed, in public places is an important risk factor for firearm-related crime. In the 1980s and 1990s, police departments across the country began to develop and implement strategies to address illegal weapons carrying. Often these strategies have involved aggressive efforts to identify and physically search individuals suspected of illegally carrying a firearm.

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Eugenics and Public Health: Historical Connections and Ethical Implications

The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190245191.013.56 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 641-652

Author(s):

Paul Lombardo

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Social Progress ◽

Public Health Genetics ◽

Ethical Implications ◽

New Public Health ◽

New Public ◽

Hereditary Conditions ◽

Ethical Significance

This chapter details historical points of connection between the field of public health and the eugenics movement in the United States, and explores the ethical significance of public health genetics in light of that history. It explains how attention to both eugenics and public health grew simultaneously in the twentieth-century United States, and how both fields contributed to the growth of laws that emphasized the use of the police power to constrain reproduction and immigration among certain groups as a means to advance efficiency and social progress. The chapter suggests that an emphasis on the prevention of problematic hereditary conditions supplies a similar motive for a new public health genetics today.

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Yang Chongrui and the First National Midwifery School: Childbirth Reform in Early Twentieth-Century China

Asian Medicine ◽

10.1163/157342009x12526658783493 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 280-302 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Tina Phillips Johnson

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Rockefeller Foundation ◽

Medical Personnel ◽

The United States ◽

Vital Role ◽

Social Needs ◽

New Public Health ◽

New Public ◽

The Government ◽

Chinese Intellectuals

AbstractThis paper examines the First National Midwifery School (FNMS) and its connexions with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Nationalist government. During the Nationalist era (1927‐37), western medical personnel and Chinese intellectuals attempted to modernise China by reforming childbirth as part of a new public health system. As most of the biomedical personnel in China were trained in the United States, it may be expected that midwifery reform would have followed the same path as in the West, with physicians displacing midwives. On the contrary, in China we see a blending of Chinese cultural and social needs with western public health methods to create a system that has survived in China to this day. The FNMS acted as a liaison between East and West, between private philanthropic organisations and the government. The most significant player in this field, Dr Yang Chongrui, played a vital role in professionalizing the new occupation of the modern Chinese midwife. Yang’s vision to train midwives to reduce the high maternal and infant mortality rates was one of the most important public health efforts in China during this time. In the process, women were targeted both as actors in China’s nation-building strategies and as reproducers of China’s citizenry.

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