Health and Humanity: A History of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 1935–1985

Description

Between 1935 and 1985, the nascent public health profession developed scientific evidence and practical know-how to prevent death on an unprecedented scale. Thanks to public health workers, life expectancy rose rapidly as generations grew up free from the scourges of smallpox, typhoid, and syphilis. In Health and Humanity, Karen Kruse Thomas offers a thorough account of the growth of academic public health in the United States through the prism of the oldest and largest independent school of public health in the world. Thomas follows the transformation of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (JHSPH), now known as the Bloomberg School of Public Health, from a small, private institute devoted to doctoral training and tropical disease research into a leading global educator and innovator in fields from biostatistics to mental health to pathobiology. A provocative, wide-ranging account of how midcentury public health leveraged federal grants and anti-Communist fears to build the powerful institutional networks behind the health programs of the CDC, WHO, and USAID, the book traces how Johns Hopkins helped public health take center stage during the scientific research boom triggered by World War II. It also examines the influence of politics on JHSPH, the school’s transition to federal grant funding, the globalization of public health in response to hot and cold war influences, and the expansion of the school’s teaching program to encompass social science as well as lab science. Revealing how faculty members urged foreign policy makers to include saving lives in their strategy of "winning hearts and minds," Thomas argues that the growth of chronic disease and the loss of Rockefeller funds moved the JHSPH toward international research funded by the federal government, creating a situation in which it was sometimes easier for the school to improve the health of populations in India and Turkey than on its own doorstep in East Baltimore. Health and Humanity is a comprehensive account of the ways that JHSPH has influenced the practice, pedagogy, and especially our very understanding of public health on both global and local scales. Contents ......Page 8 Preface ......Page 12 List of Abbreviations ......Page 16 Origins of US Graduate Public Health Education ......Page 22 Public Health Problem Solving ......Page 30 Federal Funds for Public Health Training ......Page 36 Conclusion ......Page 40 1. The Southern Roots of Public Health at Johns Hopkins ......Page 41 Disease Hunting in Dixie ......Page 44 Baltimore Confronts the Color Bar ......Page 55 The Best Place in the World to Study Syphilis ......Page 58 The Bioethics of Syphilis Research ......Page 67 Conclusion ......Page 71 2. School at War ......Page 73 Expansion and Specialization of Public Health Education ......Page 74 Polio ......Page 84 The Medical Planning and Development Committee ......Page 90 Conclusion ......Page 96 3. Postwar Public Health Science ......Page 97 The Polio Decade ......Page 100 The NIH Model of Public Health Research ......Page 107 Early Chronic Disease Research and Teaching ......Page 114 Conclusion ......Page 126 4. The School and the City ......Page 130 The Rise of the Eastern Health District and the Baltimore Medical Care Plan ......Page 131 Stebbins and Williams Square Off ......Page 138 Public Health Administration ......Page 145 The Social Determinants of Health and Developmental Disabilities ......Page 155 Conclusion ......Page 164 5. Rethinking the Public Health Curriculum ......Page 166 Teaching Preventive Medicine ......Page 167 Teaching Basic Science ......Page 172 The Committee to Review the Educational Objectives of the School of Hygiene and Public Health ......Page 176 Conclusion ......Page 181 6. The Postwar Geopolitics of American Public Health ......Page 182 Public Health for National Defense ......Page 183 Training the Global Health Workforce ......Page 192 Showdown ......Page 199 The School after Turner and Sputnik ......Page 202 Conclusion ......Page 206 7. Missionaries and Mercenaries ......Page 208 The First Division of International Health......Page 209 The Pull of South Asia ......Page 213 The Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Training and Research ......Page 221 Population Bombs, IUDs, and Other Incendiary Devices ......Page 230 The Narangwal Study ......Page 241 Conclusion ......Page 247 8. The Social Sciences, Urban Health, and the Great Society ......Page 268 Social and Behavioral Sciences Drive the School’s Growth ......Page 269 Public Health Nursing and the Politics of Family Planning ......Page 276 Health Services Research and the Urban Sociology of Health ......Page 286 Conclusion ......Page 295 9. Surviving the Seventies ......Page 297 1968 and Everything After ......Page 299 The School of Health Services and the Graduate Program in Nurse–Midwifery ......Page 307 The Baltimore Origins of WIC ......Page 313 The Departments of Mental Hygiene and Behavioral Sciences ......Page 317 Conclusion ......Page 324 10. The Environmental Revolution in Public Health ......Page 327 The X-Ray Vision of Russell Morgan ......Page 328 The Dilemma of Sanitary Engineering ......Page 335 The Pathobiology Menagerie ......Page 339 The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences ......Page 345 Environmental Medicine and the Growth of Toxicology ......Page 348 Conclusion ......Page 355 11. Chronic Disease Epidemiology ......Page 358 Chronic Disease under Lilienfeld ......Page 359 The Johns Hopkins Training Center for Public Health Research ......Page 364 Microwaves in Moscow ......Page 368 Conclusion ......Page 374 12. Federal Funding and Its Discontents ......Page 379 Federally Fueled Growth in Funding and Enrollment ......Page 380 The NIH and Schools of Public Health ......Page 384 Affirmative Action at JHSPH ......Page 394 Conclusion ......Page 398 13. Days of Reckoning and Renewal ......Page 400 The Risks of Intervention and Hope for Change ......Page 401 The Child Survival Revolution ......Page 418 D. A. Henderson and the Rise of Academic Centers ......Page 422 Conclusion ......Page 429 Epilogue ......Page 431 Appendix A. JHSPH Leadership and Budgets ......Page 438 Appendix B. Publications from Research on the Eastern Health District of Baltimore ......Page 441 Notes ......Page 444 A......Page 518 B......Page 519 C......Page 520 D......Page 522 E......Page 523 F......Page 524 G......Page 525 H......Page 526 I......Page 527 J......Page 528 K......Page 529 M......Page 530 N......Page 533 P......Page 534 Q......Page 536 R......Page 537 S......Page 538 T......Page 540 W......Page 541 X......Page 542 Z ......Page 543 Illustrations......Page 250