In this blog post, I will be summarizing and commenting on the course reading "Ten Great Public Health Achievements in U.S. 1900-1999."
After reading this article, I am astounded by the broad impact of public health. All ten of these public health achievements have greatly contributed to the overall health of the United States population. Thus, as stated in the article, these public health innovations helped achieve a 25 year increase in overall life expectancy over the past century. Although all ten of the achievements are very important, I believe that the most important public health innovation of the 20th century is the series of vaccination that has virtually eradicated smallpox and polio, and has controlled other infectious diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella. Nowadays, all babies that are born receive some sort of vaccination of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), influenza b, and tetanus. Most of these vaccinations need to be administered again every ten years due to the fact that these infectious diseases can mutate and become immune to previous vaccinations. By being able to control the outbreak of these infectious diseases, millions of lives have been saved. Therefore, these vaccinations, in my opinion, is the most important public health achievement of the 20th century.
A public health achievement that I can particularly resonate with is motor-vehicle safety. Like most teenagers, I am new to driving and have only had my license for two years. Therefore, there is a higher chance that I might get into an accident than someone who is an experienced driver would. With the advent of safer cars and seat belts/air bags, this could not only reduce my personal injury should I get into an accident but also reduce the injury of the person I get into an accident with. Being a teenager, I am well aware of the problem of drinking and driving. Teenagers have high adrenaline in their blood and mix that with alcohol and there will most likely be accidents on the road. However, motor safety laws have been very strict about drinking and driving and permit only the slightest amount of alcohol level if you are driving. The police has also been very effective in enforcing these laws. The problem of drinking and driving affects me because back in high school, if I am driving home from a friend's house, I do not want to be on the road with drunk drivers or speeding drivers. Although I may drive perfectly and obey all the laws, I cannot control the other person's driving and should I get into an accident, we will both get injured even though I may have done nothing wrong on my part. Therefore, this sometimes makes me think twice about driving at night.
I believe that the improvement of mental health should be included in this list. According to The US Department of Health and Human Services, about 1 in 4 US adults suffer from some type of mental disorder with major depression as the leading cause of disability in the US. However, research over the past decades have made great strides in understanding the biological causes of mental disorder and developing mental treatment/interventions. Nowadays, there are numerous programs and drugs that patients suffering from mental problems can look to for help. This is a very important achievement because there are now services out there to help this particular segment of the population.
Vaccinations are indeed very important, although one could argue that improvements in water safety and sanitation are the most important achievement if you are measuring by number of lives saved, as you seemed to be doing. If you recall the graph that you saw in class showing the decline in mortality rates in the US, most of that decline came before the early 20th century, and there were only relatively small decreases after that with the advent of antibiotics and vaccines. Still, no one can say that vaccinations have not been a very important improvement in the health of the nation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the importance of motor-vehicle safety as well, and although I've been driving for over 15 years already, it's still something I think about often in my own life. You also make a good point about the importance of improvements in mental health, which is so often an overlooked topic. While it's still often a difficult problem to deal with, the increased attention that mental health has gotten in more recent years has led to increased awareness and a willingness to face the issue.