A Health Promotion Primer for the 1990s

Abstract

Prologue: Alexis de Tocqueville, the French social philosopher; provided what is perhaps the most penetrating analysis ever written of the relationship between character and society in America in his classic work, Democracy in America . In the 1830s, based on observation and conversation with many Americans, Tocqueville singled out family life, religious tradition, and participation in local politics as helping to create the kind of individual who could sustain a connection to a wider political community and thus support the maintenance of free institutions. But he also warned that some aspects of the American character, particularly the steadfast belief in “individualism,” might eventually isolate Americans one from another and, in the process, undermine the conditions of freedom. In this opening essay, Lester Breslow, a distinguished professor of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, and dean emeritus of its School of Public Health, suggests that neither an exclusive focus on the i...