New Book Chronicles 20th Century Public Health Advances in America

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 30--Over the past 100 years, life expectancy for Americans has risen by more than 27 years and infant mortality has decreased by more than 90 percent. Polio has gone from being a pervasive childhood disease to one all but eradicated in North America. These and other twentieth-century public health advances that have dramatically improved human health and longevity are chronicled in an engrossing new book co-edited by the Historian for The New York Academy of Medicine.

Silent Victories: the History and Practice of Public Health in Twentieth-Century America, published in November by Oxford University Press, explores ten major health and safety issues with which American public health programs contended during the twentieth century. Experts on each issue trace the ways in which public health discoveries, practices, and programs have collectively reduced morbidity and mortality.

Infectious disease control, workplace and vehicular safety, and tobacco-use reduction are just a few of the public health success stories explained in Silent Victories. With regard to vehicular safety, for example, the book illustrates how public health evolved to address changes in population, social mores, and technology. At the turn of the century, automobiles were considered a novelty and accidents were few, but by the 1920s the number of deadly automobile accidents had risen dramatically. Starting in the mid 1960s, the advent of seatbelt laws, safer cars and roads, and public campaigns against drunk driving led to a marked decrease in automobile-related deaths.

The book attributes much of the dramatic improvement in Americans' health during the twentieth century to public health programs that were instituted to help prevent injury and disease. It also explains, however, that public health advances did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they grew out of shifting societal circumstances and relied upon allies in the form of technology, government, private institutions, and academic centers. Each of the public health advances in the book are explained in the context of five overarching influences: (1) changes in social demographics of the U.S. population; (2) dramatic shifts in longevity and the burden of disease; (3) the impact of social reform movements; (4) the accelerating effectiveness of biomedical technology; and (5) the growth of private and public organizations.

The book concludes by looking at the challenges that the public health profession must face in the future. Packed with lessons from history and scientific knowledge, Silent Victories could be used as a resource for students, health professionals, and the general public to help understand how public health has advanced in the past century and what improvements are still to come.

This book was edited by Christian Warren, PhD, Historian of The New York Academy of Medicine and John W. Ward, MD, Director of the Division of Viral Hepatitis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The chapters are written by contributing experts from prestigious institutions including the Academy, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Tufts University, Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes for Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Silent Victories: The History and Practice of Public Health in Twentieth-Century America
Edited by: John W. Ward and Christian Warren
Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195150698
November 2006
512 pages
ISBN: 978-0-19-515069-8 hardcover $49.95
To order, click here.

Founded in 1847, The New York Academy of Medicine is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit institution whose mission is to enhance the health of the public. The Academy is a leading center for urban health policy and action working to enhance the health of people living in cities worldwide through research, education, advocacy, and prevention. Visit us online at www.nyam.org.

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Posted on November 30, 2006

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