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BACKGROUND: This article explores a set of changes and continuities in relation to public health and its publics in the UK since the establishment of the Faculty of Public Health in 1972. METHODS: The article draws on historical research to produce a synthetic analysis of key changes and continuities in British public health since 1972. RESULTS: Three key areas are identified. The first centres on the issue of who has responsibility for public health. The second examines the persistence of social and racial inequalities in population health. The third considers the 'return' of infectious disease as a threat to public health. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the trend to place more responsibility for individual and collective health on the public itself, there was a proliferation in the actors and authorities involved in securing and protecting the health of the public. The strong linkages between health and structural inequality, and the challenges of addressing these, demonstrate that public health never was (and never can be) solely an individual matter. The appearance of new diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and the return of ones thought to have been conquered, like tuberculosis, raised profound questions for public health authorities and the people they cared for.

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This article examines food hygiene campaigns in Britain between 1948 and 1967, using these as a way to explore the making of health citizenship and the relationship between state and citizen. The projection of hygienic citizenship amalgamated old concerns around morality, modernity and cleanliness, as well as new issues surrounding the changing position of women, the home and the rise of consumerism. Other ways of thinking about citizenship, such as social citizenship and consumer citizenship, were incorporated within food hygiene campaigns. The success or otherwise of such efforts points to a complex re-working of the connections between public health and its publics.

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This article explores the contentious definition and communication of alcohol consumption limits and their relationship to ideas about risk through an analysis of the development of health education materials during the 1980s. It argues that changing ideas about alcohol and risk, and their communication to the public, were a reflection of both specific developments in thinking about alcohol and the harm it could pose as well as broader shifts within public health policy, practice and outlook. Risk was understood as something experienced by individuals and populations, a conceptual framing that suggested different approaches. To get to grips with these issues, the article focuses on: (1) the definition of alcohol consumption limits; (2) the communication of these limits; and (3) the limits to limits. The problems experienced in defining and communicating limits suggests not only a 'limit to limits' but also to the entire notion of risk-based 'sensible' drinking as a strategy for health education.

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Until the 1980s, anti-drug education campaigns in the UK were rare. This article examines the reasons behind a policy shift that led to the introduction of mass media drug education in the mid 1980s. It focuses on two campaigns. 'Heroin Screws You Up' ran in England, and 'Choose Life Not Drugs' ran in Scotland. The campaigns were different in tone, with 'Heroin Screws You Up' making use of fear and 'shock horror' tactics, whereas 'Choose Life Not Drugs' attempted to deliver a more positive health message. 'Heroin Screws You Up' was criticised by many experts for its stigmatising approach. 'Choose Life Not Drugs' was more favourably received, but both campaigns ran into difficulties with the wider public. The messages of these campaigns were appropriated and deliberately subverted by some audiences. This historical policy analysis points towards a complex and nuanced relationship between drug education campaigns and their audiences, which raises wider questions about health education and its 'publics'.

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In December 1980, the Health Education Council launched a campaign designed to discourage children from taking up smoking. Advertisements on TV and in comics and magazines featured a battle between Superman and the evil Nick O'Teen as he attempted to recruit children to his army of smokers. Children were also encouraged to join Superman in his fight by signing a pledge not to smoke, in return for which they received a poster and badges featuring the superhero. This article examines the design, production, delivery and reception of the Superman vs. Nick O'Teen campaign in order to probe the multi-faceted nature of the making of healthy publics in 1980s Britain. Children constituted a particularly problematic public. On the one hand, they were thought to be vulnerable and easily led towards unhealthy lifestyle choices. But on the other, children were also recognised as agents who might convince adults, as well as their peers not to smoke. This ambivalent conceptualisation of the child as a potential victim of malign influences, or potential rational agent and force for good, is typical of the 1980s, a time when the meanings of the child as consumer, agent, and citizen were undergoing increased ideological debate. This campaign also took place as ideas about health education, its place within public health policy and practice, and its relationship with the public, were in flux. The battle between Superman and Nick O'Teen was thus not just about smoking, but about particular ways of seeing and interacting with healthy (and unhealthy) publics.

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This paper focuses on the planning of New Towns in the UK in order to explore what the design and planning of urban spaces can tell us about which populations and their health matter and are prioritized, at different points in time. We concentrate on how ageing was conceptualized, and what this tells us about how ageing societies and bodies are accounted for and understood. Through the dynamic evolution of people and place, we can also come to see that what was once viewed as health promoting can become entangled with the causes of ill health. We recommend further multidisciplinary research into the planning of future cities and urban environments.

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This article discusses the production and dissemination of the emotive and informative messages promoting polio vaccination registration in Britain from 1956-1962 through the lens of public health press advertisements and posters. It argues that as the press reported on the problems which beset the vaccine campaign, and the various publics who could register for the polio vaccination multiplied, the campaign's content changed. Material was adapted to target the presumed emotional and educational needs of newly eligible publics. The article contends that by attending to the emotional content of this campaign, the variety of publics envisioned by the producers may be examined.

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This article examines the changing nature of public health services and their relationship with the public in post-war Britain by an analysis of the exhibitions mounted by Medical Officers of Health (MOsH) in London. Focusing on the period 1948-71, the article explores a time when public health practice, and the problems it faced, were in flux. A decline in infectious disease and an increase in chronic conditions linked to lifestyle required a new role for public health services. Exhibitions were one of several methods that MOsH used to inform the public about dangers to their health, but also to persuade them to change their behaviour. The exhibition, though, offers a unique insight into the relationship between public health authorities and the public, as exhibitions brought MOsH into direct contact with people. It is suggested that in the MOsH exhibitions we can find signs of a new relationship between public health practitioners and the public. Whilst elements of the pre-war, often moralistic ideology of public health services could still be detected, there is also evidence of a more nuanced, responsive dynamic between practitioners and the people. By the end of the 1960s, 'the public' was increasingly being thought of as a collection of 'publics', including individuals, target groups and vocal respondents.

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This article examines the development of alcohol health education in Britain during the 1970s, using this as a way to explore the nature of public health and the place of the public within it. Focusing on a set of local health education campaigns, an expert committee report on alcohol prevention and a public consultation exercise on alcohol, the article highlights the presence of three different 'publics'. Health education campaigns tended to focus on the individual drinker, but the drinking habits of the whole population were also of concern. So too were the rights and responsibilities of citizen-consumers. These three publics - drinkers, the population and citizen-consumers - were often in conflict with one another, and though it was drinkers that became the object of alcohol policy, the needs of the population, and of citizen-consumers, could not be ignored.

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This article explores how and why the patient came to be repositioned as a political actor within British health care during the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on the role played by patient organizations, it is suggested that the repositioning of the patient needs to be seen in the light of growing demands for greater patient autonomy and the application of consumerist principles to health. Examining the activities of two patient groups-the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital (NAWCH) and the Patients Association (PA)-indicates that while such groups undoubtedly placed more emphasis on individual autonomy, collective concerns did not entirely fall away. The voices of patients, as well as the patient, continued to matter within British health care.

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The language of rights has long permeated discussions about health care in Britain, but during the latter half of the 20th century, patients' rights achieved a level of unprecedented prominence. By the end of the 1980s, the language of entitlement appeared to have spread into many areas of the National Health Service: consent to treatment, access to information, and the ability to complain were all legally established patients' rights. Patient organizations played a critical role in both realizing these rights and in popularizing the discourse of rights in health care in Britain. "Rights talk," however, was not without its drawbacks, as it was unclear what kinds of rights were being exercised and whether these were held by patients, consumers, or citizens.

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This article presents an historical overview of the changing meaning of the patient-consumer, and specifically the role played by patient groups in constructing the patient as consumer. It is argued that patient groups were central to the formation of the patient-consumer, but as health consumerism was taken on by the state, they lost control of this figure. Competing understandings of what it meant to be a patient-consumer developed, a shift that raises further questions about the unity of claims made in the name of the patient-consumer.

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Epidemiology has been crucial to the understanding of both tobacco smoking and illicit drug taking as public health issues in Britain since the 1960s. There were, however, significant differences in the way in which epidemiology was used between the two psychoactive substances.

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