Elizabeth Fee

According to its Constitution, the mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) was nothing less than the 'attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health' without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic status, or social condition. But how consistently and how well has the WHO pursued this mission since 1946? This comprehensive and engaging new history explores these questions by looking at its origins and its institutional antecedents, while also considering its contemporary and future roles. It examines how the WHO was shaped by the particular environments of the postwar period and the Cold War, the relative influence of the US and other approaches to healthcare, and its place alongside sometimes competing international bodies such as UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Gates Foundation. The authors re-evaluate the relative success and failure of critical WHO campaigns, from early malaria and smallpox eradication programs to struggles with Ebola today.

According to its Constitution, the mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) was nothing less than the 'attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health' without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic status, or social condition. But how consistently and how well has the WHO pursued this mission since 1946? This comprehensive and engaging new history explores these questions by looking at its origins and its institutional antecedents, while also considering its contemporary and future roles. It examines how the WHO was shaped by the particular environments of the postwar period and the Cold War, the relative influence of the US and other approaches to healthcare, and its place alongside sometimes competing international bodies such as UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Gates Foundation. The authors re-evaluate the relative success and failure of critical WHO campaigns, from early malaria and smallpox eradication programs to struggles with Ebola today.

In the face of the long domination of medical care by men, Women and Health explores from a variety of perspectives the twin issues of women in health care, and the health care of women. Specific sections address the women's health movement, birth control and childbirth, women in the health labor force, and the influence of women's employment on their health. Already acclaimed by scholars and health policy-makers alike, Women and Health is sure to become a standard sourcebook on an important and neglected subject.

Originally published in 1943, Civilization and Disease was based on a series of lectures that the medical historian Henry E. Sigerist delivered at Cornell University in 1940. Now back in print, the book is a wide-ranging account of the importance of social factors on health and illness and the impact that disease has had on societies throughout human history. Despite considerable advances in both medicine and historiography, Civilization and Disease remains a landmark work in the history of medicine and a fascinating look at, first, civilization as a factor in the genesis and spread of disease, and second, the effects of disease on such aspects of civilization as economics, social life, law, philosophy, religion, science, and the arts. In a new foreword written for this edition, Elizabeth Fee outlines Sigerist's life, works, and legacy as a historian, a teacher, and an advocate for universal health care, hailing Civilization and Disease as "an excellent introduction to Sigerist's work."

At the end of the nineteenth century, public health was the province of part-time political appointees and volunteer groups of every variety. Public health officers were usually physicians, but they could also be sanitary engineers, lawyers, or chemists-there was little agreement about the skills and knowledge necessary for practice. In Disease and Discovery, Elizabeth Fee examines the conflicting ideas about public health's proper subject and scope and its search for a coherent professional unity and identity. She draws on the debates and decisions surrounding the establishment of what was initially known as the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the first independent institution for public health research and education, to crystallize the fundamental questions of the field. Many of the issues of public health education in the early twentieth century are still debated today. What is the proper relationship of public health to medicine? What is the relative importance of biomedical, environmental, and sociopolitical approaches to public health? Should schools of public health emphasize research skills over practical training? Should they provide advanced training and credentials for the few or simpler educational courses for the many? Fee explores the many dimensions of these issues in the context of the founding of the Johns Hopkins school. She details the efforts to define the school's structure and purpose, select faculty and students, and organize the curriculum, and she follows the school's growth and adaptation to the changing social environment through the beginning of World War II. As Fee demonstrates, not simply in its formation but throughout its history the School of Hygiene served as a crucible for the forces shaping the public health profession as a whole.

In the face of the long domination of medical care by men, Women and Health explores from a variety of perspectives the twin issues of women in health care, and the health care of women. Specific sections address the women's health movement, birth control and childbirth, women in the health labor force, and the influence of women's employment on their health. Already acclaimed by scholars and health policy-makers alike, Women and Health is sure to become a standard sourcebook on an important and neglected subject.