Showing papers by "Daniel M. Fox published in 2003"

The Politics of Emergency Health Powers and the Isolation of Public Health

Abstract: The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act became a contentious document in more than 30 states in 2001 and 2002. Controversy has focused on recommendations by the authors of the Model Act that seemed to accord higher priority to collective action in emergencies than to protecting privacy and property. This situation has several causes that derive from the characteristics of public health emergencies during the past half century and the relative isolation of public health officials from both their colleagues in government and many members of the public.

From public health to population health: how law can redefine the playing field.

Abstract: Today’s panel is about the expanding boundary of population health policy, what that expanding boundary has to do with law, and what kinds of challenges and opportunities come out of it. What I want to do for the next few minutes is talk to you about the notion of population health as it exists where law and policy are made, rather than where it exists in a spectacular international theoretical literature. Then I want to introduce our panelists. In the process, I will explain why the Honorable John Nilson, is not with us, which tells you a great deal about not only the real world of the politics of population health, but also about the kind of trouble you can get into if you are a first class lawyer involved in population health.

Populations and the law: the changing scope of health policy.

Abstract: Changes in the scope of health policy in the United States are creating opportunities and obligations for lawmakers and the lawyers who advise them. These changes are the result of a new politics of policy for the health of populations. The new politics is connecting areas of policy that, because they have had separate histories, are governed by distinct, usually uncoordinated laws and regulations. The subject of the new politics of health policy is what the Iowa Senate President, speaking in a plenary at the 2003 conference on Public Health Law in the 21st Century, called the “quality of life, what the people think is important.” An increasing number of leaders in general govemment–people who run for office and their staff–have practical reasons to make policy that acknowledges the expanding scope of what their constituents define as health policy.

Doctors and Reformers: Discussion and Debate over Health Policy, 1925-1950 (review)

Abstract: Keith, Oliver Lodge, Sir William Bragg) and Englishness by focusing on an episode at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1927 when the Bishop of Ripon called for a ten-year moratorium on science. Timothy Boon vividly introduces the film-maker Paul Rotha’s ideas about history, landscape, and progress as expressed in one of his films. Elizabeth Darling considers Elizabeth Denby’s ideas about housing reform and the relationship of the built environment and social health. In an outstanding article Keith Vernon elucidates the ideas about the development of student life and health at civic universities which led to the provision of student facilities such as halls of residence. Abigail Beach considers the ideas of citizenship behind inner-city health centers and their ambivalent relationship with the medical profession; Mathew Thomson examines the interwar definitions of mental defectives or noncitizens; Rhodri Hayward presents the ideas of the anatomist Arthur Keith and the medical theories of the novelist and painter Morley Roberts; and, in a moving article, Lesley Hall considers the ideas of Stella Browne on women, health, and society. In short, this is a model collection with individual papers that both make important contributions to their own areas, and together successfully increase our understanding of the complex medical and cultural history of the interwar years.

Noble conspirator: Florence S Mahoney and the rise of the National Institutes of Health.

Abstract: Scientific Biography in 1989. Nevertheless, it is an important contribution. As the time is not yet ripe for a detailed biography, we need books on single aspects of Ehrlich's life. His papers, held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York, contain a lot of material that needs to be considered. Thus, in spite of its shortcomings, Silverstein's book is important as it gives a rich and detailed overview of the intellectual development of Ehrlich's immunology. Florence S Mahoney, a wealthy private citizen, assisted the growth of the biomedical research enterprise in the United States federal-government during the last six decades of the twentieth century. Mahoney exuded intelligence and charm; and she had access to leaders in politics (especially in the Democratic Party) and newspaper publishing. Mahoney and Mary Lasker, her principal ally, began to lobby for public investment in biomedical research during the 1940s. In that decade, an ever-growing number of opinion leaders believed that increased public spending for research, professional education, and facilities would quickly translate into longer and more pleasant lives for Americans. Two new federal policies financed what became a supply side spending spree on behalf of the health sector that continues today. Robinson relegates one of these policy innovations, establishing the extramural research programme of the National Institutes of Health, to a footnote and does not mention the other, massive federal subsidies to build and equip hospitals. Congress routinely re-authorized the US Public Health Service (PHS), which includes the NIH, while the Second World War was the highest national priority. As a result, few people except agency and Congressional staff noticed that the PHS now had authority to make grants for research to non-federal investigators and institutions. In the final months of the war, PHS leaders quietly secured White House approval to transfer the most promising research contracts, as well as funding to continue them, from the temporary federal agency that managed wartime science to the new NIH extramural grants programme. Within a few weeks these contracts became the first NIH grants. Meanwhile, a highly visible effort to establish, through legislation, a national agency to fund research in all scientific fields stalled because of conflicts about policy within Congress and between Congress and the White House. These conflicts were not resolved for almost five years, during which NIH leaders and their allies, who included leaders in research, advocacy and philanthropic groups, and the media, as …