The Healthiest City


Book Description

Between 1850 and 1900, Milwaukee’s rapid population growth also gave rise to high death rates, infectious diseases, crowded housing, filthy streets, inadequate water supplies, and incredible stench. The Healthiest City shows how a coalition of reform groups brought about community education and municipal action to achieve for Milwaukee the title of “the healthiest city” by the 1930s. This highly praised book reminds us that cutting funds and regulations for preserving public health results in inconvenience, illness, and even death. “A major work. . . . Leavitt focuses on three illustrative issues—smallpox, garbage, and milk, representing the larger areas of infectious disease, sanitation, and food control.”—Norman Gevitz, Journal of the American Medical Association “Leavitt’s research provides additional evidence . . . that improvements in sanitation, living conditions, and diet contributed more to the overall decline in mortality rates than advances in medical practice. . . . A solid contribution to the history of urban reform politics and public health.”—Jo Ann Carrigan, Journal of American History




The Contagious City


Book Description

By the time William Penn was planning the colony that would come to be called Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia at its heart, Europeans on both sides of the ocean had long experience with the hazards of city life, disease the most terrifying among them. Drawing from those experiences, colonists hoped to create new urban forms that combined the commercial advantages of a seaport with the health benefits of the country. The Contagious City details how early Americans struggled to preserve their collective health against both the strange new perils of the colonial environment and the familiar dangers of the traditional city, through a period of profound transformation in both politics and medicine. Philadelphia was the paramount example of this reforming tendency. Tracing the city's history from its founding on the banks of the Delaware River in 1682 to the yellow fever outbreak of 1793, Simon Finger emphasizes the importance of public health and population control in decisions made by the city's planners and leaders. He also shows that key figures in the city's history, including Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, brought their keen interest in science and medicine into the political sphere. Throughout his account, Finger makes clear that medicine and politics were inextricably linked, and that both undergirded the debates over such crucial concerns as the city's location, its urban plan, its immigration policy, and its creation of institutions of public safety. In framing the history of Philadelphia through the imperatives of public health, The Contagious City offers a bold new vision of the urban history of colonial America.




History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866


Book Description

Traces the development of the sanitary and health problems of New York City from earliest Dutch times to the culmination of a nineteenth-century reform movement that produced the Metropolitan Health Act of 1866, the forerunner of the present New York City Department of Health. Professor Duffy shows the city's transition from a clean and healthy colonial settlement to an epidemic-ridden community in the eighteenth century, as the city outgrew its health and sanitation facilities. He describes the slow growth of a demand for adequate health laws in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to the establishment of the first permanent health agency in 1866.




Shaping Neighbourhoods


Book Description

Shaping Neighbourhoods is unique in combining all aspects of the spatial planning of neighbourhoods and towns whilst emphasising positive outcomes for people’s health and global sustainability. This new edition retains the combination of radicalism, evidence-based advice and pragmatism that made earlier editions so popular. This updated edition strengthens guidance in relation to climate change and biodiversity, tackling crises of population health that are pushing up health-care budgets, but have elements of their origins in poor place spatial planning – such as isolation, lack of everyday physical activity, and respiratory problems. It is underpinned by new research into how people use their localities, and the best way to achieve inclusive, healthy, low-carbon settlements. The guide can assist with: • Understanding the principles for planning healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods and towns • Planning collaborative and inclusive processes for multi-sectoral working • Developing know-how and skills in matching local need with urban form • Discovering new ways to integrate development with natural systems • Designing places with character and recognising good urban form Whether you are a student faced with a local planning project; a public health professional, planner, urban designer or developer involved in new development or regeneration; a council concerned with promoting healthy and sustainable environments; or a community group wanting to improve your neighbourhood – you will find help here.




Epidemic City


Book Description

Presents a historical analysis of the New York City Department of Health from the 1960s to the present-day.




Beyond the Screen


Book Description

This scholarly anthology presents a new framework for understanding early cinema through its usage outside the realm of entertainment. From its earliest origins until the beginning of the twentieth century, cinema provided widespread access to remote parts of the globe and immediate reports on important events. Reaching beyond the nickelodeon theatres, cinema became part of numerous institutions, from churches and schools to department stores and charitable organizations. Then, in 1915, the Supreme Court declared moviemaking a “busines, pure and simple,” entrenching the film industry’s role as a producer of “harmless entertainment.” In Beyond the Screen, contributors shed light on how pre-1915 cinema defined itself through institutional interconnections and publics interested in science, education, religious uplift, labor organizing, and more.




Public Health Reports


Book Description




Healthy Cities and Urban Policy Research


Book Description

This is the first academic work to combine public health with urban planning.




Health Services Reports


Book Description




Urban Health


Book Description

In the twentieth century, the urban settings of the wealthy nations were largely associated with opportunity, accumulation of wealth, and better health than their rural counterparts. In the twenty-first century, demographic changes, globalization, and climate change are having important health consequences on wealthy nations and especially on low- and middle-income countries. The increasing concentration of poverty and significant inequalities between urban neighborhoods and the physical and social environments in cities are important determinants of population health. In this important new book, experts identify the priority problems and outline solutions that can generate and sustain healthy urban environments. Foreword by Michael H. Bloomberg Contributors include: Sue Atkinson, John G. Bartlett, Angela Beaton, Karl Brown, Pamela Ligouri Bunker, Robert J. Bunker, Scott Burris, Waleska Teixeira Caiffa, Roel A. Coutinho, Manuel Carballo, Ruth Colagiuri, Beatriz de Faria Leao, Amélia Augusta de Lima Friche, Alex Ezeh, Geoff Green, Claudio Giulliano da Costa Octavio Gómez-Dantés, Ruth Finkelstein, Julio Frenk, Nicholas Freudenberg, Fu Hua, Sandro Galea, Ticia Gerber, Carola Hein, Catherine Hull, Tord Kjellstrom, Jacob Kumaresan, Catherine Ronald Labonté, Stephen Leeder, Godfrey Mbarauku, Gordon McGranahan, Patricia Monge, Mark R. Montgomery, Martin Mulenga, Ana Luiza Nabuco, Julie Netherland, Ndioro Ndiaye, Rougui Ndiaye-Coïc, Kalala Ngalamulume, Danielle Ompad, Stipe Oreskovic, Ariel Pablos-Méndez, Jonathan Parkinson, Fernando Augusto Proietti, Thomas C. Quinn, Carlos E. Restrepo, Kevin J. Robinson, Jonathan M. Samet, David Satterthwaite, Richard H. Schneider, Ted Schrecker, Elliott Sclar, Maria Steenland, Agis Tsouros, Arnoud P. Verhoeff, Nicole Volavka-Close, Michael Ward, Vanessa Watson, Rae Zimmerman.