Role of the Public Health Service in Housing and Urban Life

Abstract

HEALTH PROBLEMS associated with housing and the neighborhood that the housing serves-are too important to be dealt witlh on a strictly categorical basis. The problems of the slums and ghettos in America demand the broadest possible attention, and health officials at all levels must give the highest priority to their solution. The job to be done is simply too big to be handled in a unified, sharply delineated way. Indeed, much of what the Public Health Service does in support of research and developmient, preparation of standards, training of manpower, provision of technical assistance, and sharing in the costs of program development anid operation bears significantly on our national efforts to improve the quality of housing and urban living. Provocative as it might be to attempt to present data on the dollars spent by the Service for these activities and on the man-years of effort put into them, it is not only unrealistic, but also usually misleading, to attempt such a finite approach to portrayal of a diverse undertaking. Suffice it to say that all five of our bureaus-and innumerable subdivisions thereof-are partieipating to a greater oir lesser extent. Add to this participation the role,s of the various staff offices in the Office of the Surgeon General, and one perceives that we are deeply, if noit categorically, involved in the hygie,ne of housing. The question of coordination of these intramural anid supportive efforts has been the subject of -careful review. Characteristically, whenever the Service engages in a progra.m that has far-reaching implications and diverse roots within the organization, many s,pecialists, believe that we should have either a vice president-in-charge-of or a coordinating committee for. However, there are equally persuasive exponents of the theory that such organizational arrangements tend to inlhibit, rather than advance, problem-solving. In my opinion, the evolution and motivation of our program planning and budgeting system and the full flowering of our comprehensive health planning and services activities will provide logical frameworks within which we can effectively translate our scientific and technical activities into action progra,ms for the hygiene of housing. In addition to intramural efforts and finatncial support for extramural activities, we also afford substantial teichnical assistance to other Federal agencies that are trying to improve the quality of urban living. Specifically, the Service works with the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, of C'ommerce, and of Justice and with the Office of Economic OpporMr. Pond is Assistant Surgeon General for Special Projects of the Public Health Service. He presented this paper on October 25, 1967, at the engineering and sanitation section program, 95th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Miami Beach, Fla,. (The photographs for the frontispiece and paper were supplied by the National Center for Urban and Industrial Health, Public Health Service, Cincinnati, Ohio.)