History of Public Health and Health Policy

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Level: 
Master's
CEU credits: 
4
Academic year: 
2009/2010
Academic year: 
2010/2011
Semester: 
Winter
Start and end dates: 
10 Jan 2011 - 1 Apr 2011
Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]: 
Department of History
Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area: 
Social and Political History in a Comparative Perspective
CEU Instructor(s): 
Ohad Parnes
Additional information: 
Today, health and public health have become a matter of global politics. But this has not always been the case. The course will discuss the role of health and disease as aspects of policy making in the western world both from a theoretical and from a historical perspective. From a historical perspective, the course will discuss how various aspects of health and disease have gradually been incorporated into the public sphere – beginning around the middle of the nineteenth century and ending with very recent developments in health policy. At the same time, the course is constructed problem-oriented. Each week will be dedicated to one topic, which will be discussed, both from its historical perspective and from a conceptual-theoretical perspective. The questions that will be central to our discussion will be: to what extent is it legitimate to include health and disease as subject of policy making. What are the criteria according to which these policies could be assessed? Are there universal criteria to dealing with health and disease? Alternatively, to what extent is health policy part f a political or ideological system (e.g. state-directed systems, free markets etc.)? The course will be dedicated to the history of health and disease in its wider historical, political and social context since the middle of the nineteenth century. Attention will be given both to the role of diseases as historical actors (e.g. in form of epidemics), as well as to the history of what is generally called ‘public health’, i.e. the institutionalized (and often state-governed) attempts to manipulate and modify the biomedical reality of individuals and populations. One of the recurring themes of the course will be the contextual nature of medical knowledge and the importance of studying the specific national, political and cultural settings of health and disease. Attention will also be given to the uses of medicine as a tool for the domination and marginalization of individuals and groups – e.g. in the story of what is sometimes called ‘colonial medicine’. Finally, the course will deal with some of the current topics in the interrelation between health and the state, like in the case of health inequalities which challenges some of the most deeply held convictions about the ability of health policy to promote health.
Learning Outcomes: 
It is expected that the students will acquire a) an introduction to the history of medicine and public health in the 19th and 20th centuries; b) basic skills in the historiography of science; c) an understanding of the epistemological, conceptual and ethical issues involved in the study of the history of medical knowledge in the modern period. Course goals: A. To understand the historical dimension of medical knowledge in general and health policy in particular. B. To familiarize students with some of the main issues in the history of medicine and of public health since the 19th century. C. To encourage students to think critically about the role of medicine, medical knowledge and health policy in modern society. D. To acquaint the student with the particular methodological challenges involved in the historiography of science and medicine.
Assessment : 
1. Regular and active participation in class discussion – 25% of the grade 2. Two papers, between 5 and 10 pages. The first due in mid-term, the second in week 11. 3. Oral presentation: not compulsory. Only those wishing to do so. Not a requirement but definitely a means to ensure a higher grade
Full description: 

Class schedule: 

  1. Introduction to the subject, general discussion.
  2. What is health? What is disease?
    1. Michael Bury: Health and illness, London 2008. Chapter 1: What is health? pp. 1-20. [pdf]
    2. Jackie Leach Scully: What is a disease? Disease, disability and their definitions, EMBO reports, Vol. 5, 2004, pp. 650–653.  [pdf]
  3. Changing concepts of health and disease around 1800.
    1. Charles Rosenberg: Framing disease. Illness, society, and history. From: Charles Rosenberg & Janet Golda (eds.): Framing disease. Studies in cultural history. New Brunswick 1992, pp. xiii-xxvi. [pdf]
  4. Health policy in the nineteenth century (I): Reactions to epidemics.
    1. Richard J. Evans: Epidemics and revolutions: Cholera in nineteenth-century Europe. Past & Present, Vol. 120, 1988, pp.123-146.[pdf]
    2. David F. Musto: Quarantine and the problem of AIDS. In: Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox (eds.): AIDS. The burdens of history, Berkeley 1988. Link: http://escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft7t1nb59n&chunk.id=d0e977&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e977&brand=eschol
  5. Health policy in the nineteenth century (II): The sanitary reform.
    1. W. F. Bynum: Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge 1994. Chapter 3: Medicine in the community.[pdf].
      2. Christopher Hamlin: Predisposing causes and public health in 
      early nineteenth century medical thought, Social History of Medicine,  Vol. 5, 1992, pp. 43-70.[pdf]
  6. The ‘bacteriological revolution’ and the new regime of diagnosis.
    1. Andrew Cunningham: Transforming plague. The laboratory and the identity of infectious disease. From: A. Cunningham, 'Transforming Plague: The Laboratory and the Identity of Infectious Disease', in A. Cunningham and P. Williams (eds.), The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 209-244. [pdf]
    2. Charles Rosenberg: The tyranny of diagnosis: specific entities and individual experience. Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 80, 2002, pp. 237-260.[pdf]
  7. ‘Public health’ in the 20th century and its origins.
    1. Paul Starr: The social transformation of American Medicine, N.A. 1983. Chapter 5: The boundaries of pubic health, pp. 180-197. [pdf]
    2. Elizabeth Fee and Dorothy Porter: Public health, preventive medicine and professionalization: England and America in the ninetheenth century. In Andrew Wear (ed.): Medicine in Society, Cambridge 1992. [pdf]
  8. Health as a national crisis: the rise of chronic disease in the twentieth century.
    1. Gerald N. Grob: The deadly truth. A history of disease in America. Cambridge MA 2007. Chapter 9: The discovery of chronic illness.[pdf]
    2. David Armstrong: Use of the genealogical method in the exploration of chronic illness: A research note, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 30, 1990, pp. 1225-1227. [pdf
  9. The globalization of disease and of health policy.
    1. Paul Weindling: From infectious to chronic diseases: changing patterns of sickness in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Andrew Wear (ed.): Medicine in society, historical essays, Cambridge 1992, pp. 303-316. [pdf]
    2. Sheldon Watts: Disease and Medicine in World History, London 2003.[pdf]
  10. Epidemics and health policy in the twentieth century: AIDS.
    1. Daniel M. Fox: AIDS and the American health polity: The history and prospects of a crisis of authority. In: Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox (eds.): AIDS. The burdens of history, Berkeley 1988. Link: http://escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft7t1nb59n&chunk.id=d0e5593&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e5593&brand=eschol
    1. Gerald M. Oppenheimer: In the eye of the storm: The epidemiological construction of AIDS. In: Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox (eds.): AIDS. The burdens of history, Berkeley 1988. Link: http://escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft7t1nb59n&chunk.id=d0e4610&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e4610&brand=ucpress
  11. Imperialism and colonial medicine.
    1. Lenore Manderson: Sickness and the state. Health and sickness in colonial Malaya 1870-1940, Cambridge 2002. Chapter 1: Introduction. Imposing the Empire, pp. 1-27. [pdf]
    2. Michael Worboys: Colonial Medicine as Mission and Mandate: Leprosy and Empire, 1900-1940, Osiris, Vol. 15, 2001, pp. 207-220. [pdf
  12. History and health policy in the twenteith century.
    1. Charles Rosenberg: Our present complaint. American medicine, then and now. Chapter 10: Anticipated consequences. Historians, history, and health policy, pp. 185-205.[pdf]
    2. Virginia Berridge: History matters? History’s role in health policy making, Medical History, Vol. 52, 2008, pp. 311-326. [pdf]
  13. Citizenship and health in post-World War II Europe.
    1. Dorothy Porter: Health, Civilisation and the State: a History of Public Health from Antiquity to Modernity, London 2006. Chapter 11: Health and the rise of the classic welfare state, pp. 196-230. [pdf]
    2. Dorothy Porter: Health, Civilisation and the State: a History of Public Health from Antiquity to Modernity, London 2006. Chapter 12: Conditional citizenship; the new political economy of health, pp. 231-277. [pdf]
  14. The ‘medicalization’ of life in the twentieth century.
    1. David Armstrong: The rise of surveillance medicine. Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 17. 1995, pp. 393-404. [pdf]
    2. Peter Conrad: The shifting engines of medicalization, Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, Vol. 46, 2005, pp. 3-14[pdf]
  15. The emergence of ‘Risk’ as a medical category.
    1. Robert Aronowitz: The converged experience of risk and disease, The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 87, 2009, pp. 417-442. [pdf]
    2. Robert Aronowitz: Making sense of illness. Science, society and disease, Cambridge 1998. Chapter 5: The social construction of coronary heart disease risk factors, pp. 111-144.[pdf]
  16. Civilizing the body: behavior and the notion of ‘health promotion’.
    1. Alan M. Brandt: Behavior, disease, and health in the twentieth-century United States The moral valence of individual risk. In: Alan M.  Brandt & Paul Rozin (eds.): Morality and health. New York, 1997, pp.53-78.[pdf]
    2. Janet Golden: Message in a bottle: the making of fetal alcohol syndrome, Cambridge MA 2005, chapters 2-4. [pdf]
  17. Smoking as a health-political problem.
    1. Alan Brandt: The Cigarette, Risk, and American Culture, Daedalus, Vol. 119, pp. 155-176. [pdf]
    2. Paolo Palladino: On smoking, socialism and the health of the British nation. In: Illana Löwy & John Krige (eds.): Images of disease. Science, public policy and health in post-war Europe, Luxembourg 2001, pp. 53-72. [pdf]
  18. Policies of alcoholism in the twentieth century: East and West.
    1. Virginia Berridge: Disease, risk, harm and safety; Trends in post-war British alcohol policy. In: Illana Löwy & John Krige (eds.): Images of disease. Science, public policy and health in post-war Europe, Luxembourg 2001, pp. 41-53. [pdf]
    2. Justyna Laskowska-Otwinowska: Community and individual changes in propaganda against alcoholism in Poland from 1945-1990s. In: Illana Löwy & John Krige (eds.): Images of disease. Science, public policy and health in post-war Europe, Luxembourg 2001, pp. 329-352. [pdf]
    3. Sergei Orlov: The medicalised sobering stations: A history of a unique Soviet practice. In: Illana Löwy & John Krige (eds.): Images of disease. Science, public policy and health in post-war Europe, Luxembourg 2001, pp. 353-362. [pdf]
  19. The politics of ‘health inequalities’ and its history.
    1. John Welshman: Searching for social capital: historical perspectives on health, poverty and culture. Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, Vol. 126, pp. 268-274. [pdf]
    2. Virginia Berridge & Stuart Blume: Poor Health: Social Inequality before and after the Black Report, London 2002 (selected readings to be announced).
  20. Maternal and Child Health Policymaking.
    1. Rima D. Apple: Constructing mothers. Scientific motherhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Social History of Medicine, Vol. 8, 1995, pp. 161-178. pdf
    2. Rima D. Apple: The Medicalization of Infant Feeding in the United States and New Zealand: Two Countries, One Experience. Journal of Human Lactation, Vol. 10, pp. 31-37. [pdf]
  21. Vaccination.
    1. Pieter H. Streefland: Public doubts about vaccination safety and resistance against vaccination, Public Health, Vol. 55, pp.155-172. [pdf]
    2. Nadja Durbach: 'They might as well brand us': working-class resistance to compulsory vaccination in Victorian England, Social History of Medicine, Vol. 13, 2000, pp. 45-62. [pdf]
    3. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch: The Golem. How to think about medicine, Chicago 2005. Chapter 8: Vaccination and parents’ rights, pp. 180-204. [pdf]
  22. Aging and its health policy.
    1. Caroll L. Estes & Elizabeth A. Binney: The biomedicalization of aging: Dangers and dilemmas, The Gerontologist, Vol. 29, 1989, pp. 587-596.
    2. Christoph Conrad: Old age and the health care system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In: Johnson, Paul A./Pat Thane (Ed.) Old age from antiquity to post-modernity. London 1998, pp. 132-145. [pdf]
    3. W. Andrew Achenbaum: Crossing frontiers: gerontology emerges as a science, Cambridge 1995. Chapter 6: The federal government as sponsor, producer, and consumer of research on aging. [pdf]
  23. Death and its policy.
    1. Philippe Aries: The hour of our death, Oxford 1981. Chapter 12: Death denied.[pdf]
    2. Shai Lavi: The modern art of dying. A history of euthonasia in the United States, Princeton 2005. Chapter 3: Legalizing euthonasia, the role of law. [pdf] Chapter 14: Euthanasia as public policy.[pdf]
    3. Margaret Lock: Twice dead. Organ transplants and the reinvention of death. Berkeley 2002.  Chapter 3: locating the moment of death;[pdf] Chapter 4: Making the new death uniform;[pdf] Chapter 10: When bodies outlive persons;[pdf]  Chapter 12: The body transcendent;[pdf] Chapter 14: Revisiting vivisection in a world short of organs.[pdf]