Children's public health policy in the United States: how the past can inform the future.
As we struggle to respond to child public health problems in the twenty-first century, the past provides many core lessons. This paper explores three of them: the need to focus on the environment that makes children sick rather than on sick children; the need to attack the biggest problems, not the most scientifically interesting ones; and the need to provide services where children are most likely to be. To illuminate these lessons, we discuss important child public health efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Markel
Howard
H
Center for the History of Medicine, University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, USA. howard@umich.edu
Golden
Janet
J
D002648:Child; D002662:Child Health Services / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D002669:Child Welfare; D004777:Environment; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D014481:United States