Wartime Health Research Articles

Dynamics of military mental health in war time

Dynamics of military mental health in war time

Professional personal health in war time: theoretical and practical aspect

The article examines the problem of the main theoretical and methodological approaches of various authors regarding the disclosure of the essential features of the concept of "occupational health". The psychological features of the organization of the vocational and psychological rehabilitation training program are described. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the criteria of each of the specified components of health, they were singled out in relation to occupational health. the bones of a specialist. Professional activity determines the state of his professional health. A negative consequence of the influence of professional activity on the personality of a specialist, the long-term effects of professional stressors are professional destruction, professional deformations, professional burnout, which disrupt the harmonious development of the personality, worsen his emotional well-being, and the state of professional health. It was noted that professional activity takes a lot of time in a person's life, and for its effective implementation, professional health must be formed. Professional health is of particular importance in modern conditions, when changes are taking place at a rapid pace in all spheres of human life, emotional overload of a person is noted in many professional spheres, tendencies towards the spread of various occupational diseases are observed, etc. The types of psychological training are revealed and which of them are revealed most effective in wartime. The main components that influence the development of the structure of professional consciousness of the individual, which is relevant for modern events in Ukraine, are analyzed.

JOURNALISTS’ MENTAL HEALTH IN WARTIME

JOURNALISTS’ MENTAL HEALTH IN WARTIME

Peculiarities of mental health of staff of educational and research organizations in the conditions of war

Introduction. In times of war, the problem of studying, maintaining and promoting the mental health of staff of organizations, in particular, educational and research organizations, gains importance as it affects staff well-being and work performance as well as the effectiveness of organizations in general. Aim: to empirically determine the levels of and factors behind the mental health of staff of educational and research organizations. Methods. The study used a set of tools called Mental Health in Wartime, which included diagnostic instruments and a special questionnaire to study various components of mental health of staff of educational and research organizations and the factors that affect it. The survey was conducted using Google Form. Results. The staff of educational and research organizations had a number of war-specific mental health problems (serious (high level) negative mental conditions, reduced positive mental health, and internal health locus of control). There were both negative and positive trends in staff mental health compared with pre-war times. Educational and research organization staff's age, position, and security-related characteristics of residence had relationship with staff mental health during the war. Conclusions. The findings suggest that the problem of mental health of staff of educational and research organizations in wartime is a significant social and personal problem, which needs effective psychological programs to solve it.

Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History. By Wayne Soon. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2020. 328 pp. ISBN: 9781503611931 (cloth).

[...]of his many international connections and his own globally inflected identity, Lim was able to radically transform the nature of wartime health delivery. [...]I was less persuaded by Soon's assertion that the Chinese Communist Party drew on Lim's wartime innovations in their subsequent efforts to encourage mass mobilization of medical personnel, shorten and simplify medical training, and implement basic universal healthcare. [...]a less theorized but equally important contribution of Soon's study is the way it highlights the role of institutions, financial resources, and personnel networks in directing biomedical research and practice.

Establishment and Operation of Wartime Health Care System in North Korea during the Korean War and Support from the Korean Society in Yanbian.

North Korea's health care system during the Korean War has a significant meaning in North Korean medical history and is also an appropriate research topic for understanding North Korea's wartime system. However, previous studies on North Korean medical history has been focused on before and after the war. This study traces the formation and operation of North Korea's wartime health system to fill the gap in the literature, aiming to identify that the support of the North Korean community in China's Yanbian community was key to North Korea's wartime health system. North Korea reorganized its health care system, centered on the military, such as establishing field hospitals concurrently with the outbreak of the war. However, as time went on, the North Korean health care project began to put an emphasis on protecting the lives and health of the civilians behind the frontline. In addition to the primary need to prevent infectious diseases, the hygiene and prevention project functioned as a means to control and mobilize the public by emphasizing broad public participation. Although North Korea tried to meet the demand for a large medical personnel through short-term training, medical personnel were always in short supply during the war. During the war, it was the Korean society in Yanbian that replenished medical personnel in North Korea and provided a space for a relatively stable hospital operation. Numerous Koreans in Yanbian participated in the Korean War as nurses, paramedic staff, transfusion donors, and army surgeons for North Korea. Such large-scale participation of medical personnel in Yanbian was based on the long-established medical exchanges between Yanbian and North Korea. Koreans in Yanbian also accommodated North Korean wounded, refugees, and war orphans and provided various medical assistance to them. During the war, Yanbian was a "secure rear" capable of performing medical actions that could not be done in North Korea. This study has confirmed that North Korea's current participation in public health projects, which is a characteristic of its health care sector, has its origins in the Korean War. Moreover, it demonstrates that North Korea's medical history needs to be viewed from an East Asian perspective, including the Korean society in Yanbian, rather than a national-only perspective. The application of this view to the analysis of North Korean's health care system in other historical periods would facilitate richer discussions.

Wartime health shocks and the postwar socioeconomic status and mortality of union army veterans and their children

We investigate when and how health shocks reverberate across the life cycle and down to descendants in a manual labor economy by examining the association of war wounds with the socioeconomic status and older age mortality of US Civil War (1861–5) veterans and of their adult children. Younger veterans who had been severely wounded in the war left the farm sector, becoming laborers. Consistent with human capital and job matching models, older severely wounded men were unlikely to switch sectors and their wealth declined by 37–46%. War wounds were correlated with children's socioeconomic and mortality outcomes in ways dependent on sex and paternal age group.

Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937–1945 by Nicole Elizabeth Barnes

Reviewed by: Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937–1945 by Nicole Elizabeth Barnes Wayne Soon Nicole Elizabeth Barnes. Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. xviii + 310 pp. Ill. $34.95 (978-0-520-30046-0). Nicole Barnes has written a fascinating history of Chinese health care through the critical lens of gender and emotions in modern China. Through a sophisticated analysis of archival materials, correspondences, fiction, memoirs, and speeches, Barnes argues for the centrality of women medical professionals in shaping wartime health care. Their experiences were bolstered and at times undermined by intense emotional labor, wartime contingencies, and Chinese Nationalist politics. Chapter 1 delineates how the masculine Chinese Nationalist state sought to control the health of citizens in the wartime capital of Chongqing through the heads of neighborhood associations, police officers, and sanitation men. Chapter 2 argues that ordinary women maneuvered between elite women's model of national motherhood and prevailing literary notions of deferred romance to "fashion a national community out of docile bodies and to transform hearts" through medical delivery (p. 89). Chapters 3 and 4 reveal how the female nurses cast aside family obligations and social strictures to enter new public spaces to care for the wounded and sick, performing emotional labor as part of the state's exercise of necropolitics. This necropolitics resulted in many Chinese women seeing an "important aspect of wartime womanhood as the ability to prop up the nation's fighting men" (p. 115). Chapter 5 charts the promises and perils of modern midwifery in ameliorating problems of maternal and children health. The key strength of the book is Barnes's ability to weave together multiple encounters among women and men to illustrate how women forged new intimate communities in hospitals, homes, medical training centers, and battlefronts. Their contributions offered ordinary Chinese residents "a new way of relating to one another in moments of bodily intimacy" (p. 195). Barnes also vividly illustrates how women's emotional labor came at a cost. Their active participation meant that they were often away from their families. Moreover, as illustrated in Barnes's careful analysis of writer Ba Jin's Ward Four (pp. 84–88), female doctors and nurses also faced unfair comments and undesired attention by male patients. Even as their efforts were pivotal in the making of a scientific Chinese state bent on expanding the power of necropolitics, their enterprises were not always cherished or acknowledged by male politicians, patients, and fellow medical personnel. Their leadership, however, became central to the shaping of medical care in twentieth-century China. The tribulations and contributions of the cosmopolitan Nationalist leader Song Meiling, indefatigable nursing expert Major General Zhou Meiyu, and preeminent midwifery specialist Marion Yang challenged existing narratives of male-centered histories of medicine in modern China. Considering more the transnational biographies of Song, Zhou, and Yang may shed more light on how they approached questions of expertise and femininity. Their respective education at Wellesley College, Columbia University, and Johns Hopkins University in the United States might have heightened their resolve to professionalize medical care and promote biomedical education upon their return [End Page 630] to China. Furthermore, Song, Zhou, and Yang's identities as Chinese women in the United States may have shaped their perception of American feminism, labor, and medicine, as argued by Weili Ye in her unpacking of earlier Chinese women medical students in the United States.1 Such a transnational approach would highlight Barnes's critical point on the intersection of gender and class in women's medical work in China (p. 200), augmenting existing research on class and race in the history of nursing in the United States.2 Furthermore, their global experiences challenged the consolidation of a masculine Chinese state, which partly emerged from the Late Qing and Republican Chinese politicians and intellectuals' response to the imperialistic gaze on the alleged "weak" Chinese body.3 The formation of an intimate wartime community by women medical professionals presented both a national and a global challenge to the transnational structures of masculinity circulating within and outside of China. This book is an essential read for its...

Reframing Public Health in Wartime: From the Biomedical Model to the “Wounds Inside”

This article traces the research trajectory of the Institute of Community and Public Health (ICPH) at Birzeit University, whose work focuses on life and health outcomes for Palestinians living in chronic warlike conditions under Israeli settler-colonial rule. Over decades of field-based work, ICPH researchers came to the realization that medicalized responses to trauma contributed to concealing the social and political meaning that Palestinians attribute to their collective experience. By adopting an approach that linked the biological/biomedical sphere to the political sphere through the concept of suffering, and exposing the sociopolitical conditions of life and the collective trauma inducing nature of Israeli military occupation and repression, ICPH's research has allowed for the simultaneous personalization of war and politicization of health. In addition to discussing some of the health problems identified by ongoing investigations, the article also touches on the ways in which institution building and research production are linked to the capacity of Palestinians to endure and resist violation in their struggle for justice.

Public health and infections: Health in Sweden: The National Public Health Report 2012. Chapter 15

Summary Summary Historically, communicable diseases have been the greatest threats to public health both in wartime and peacetime, and remain the most common causes of death in poor countries. Although most EU countries enjoy high living standards, have efficient sanitation systems and pursue general child vaccination programmes, there are a number of reasons for continuing to regard communicable diseases as potential public health threats. The progress we have made so far in terms of infectious disease control through vaccinations, improvements in sanitation, food control and various hygiene regulations must constantly be sustained and adjusted. The spread of infection also changes with changes in living habits. We travel more than in the past and people from all parts of the world come here. Our sexual habits have changed and, as a result, there are increased risks of infection, a subject dealt with in Chapter 9, Sexual and Reproductive Health. In addition, new, previously unknown communicable diseases have emerged. Many diseases, such as tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis infections disproportionately affect the socially vulnerable, such as drug users and the homeless. Lastly, the recent, recurrent influenza pandemics are another reason for not discounting the threat to public health of infectious diseases.

Regulating Body Boundaries and Health during the Second World War: Nationalist Discourse, Media Representations and the Experiences of Canadian Women War Workers

This article examines the intersections of gender, wartime nationalist rhetoric and the production of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies in both the Canadian workplace and the home during the Second World War. Analysing government, industry and media discourses in relation to oral history interviews with thirty-eight women aircraft workers, we discuss women's distinctive role in shaping the health and morale of the social body during wartime, to ensure the maintenance of family, nation and the Allied war effort. While health in wartime was defined in terms of worker productivity for both men and women, anxiety about women's expanded roles heightened the emphasis on moral respectability as a marker of the ‘healthy’ female body. This was further complicated by the wartime emphasis on women's responsibilities to boost morale as part of their role in maintaining health and productivity for both men and women. Through such examples as workplace regulations and domestic advice, we examine the increased monitoring of women's individual and collective bodies and the intensified demands on female war workers as they crossed between the public and private spheres. We use our oral histories to examine women's embodied memories of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies within a regional context and their responses to government, industry and media discourses.

Disease in the Capital: Nationalist Health Services and the ‘Sick [Wo]man of East Asia’ in Wartime Chongqing

The Chongqing Bureau of Public Health, established shortly after the Nationalists relocated to the wartime capital, faced frequent air raids, rampant inflation, and acute personnel shortages. Still it accomplished an astonishing amount of work, demonstrating its commitment to public health as a barometer of modernity, national stability, and political fitness. The Bureau also treated male and female bodies differently, institutionalizing gender roles through its public health administration. This paper illustrates differences between medical care for men and women, arguing that Chongqing health officials’ myopic focus on maternal issues when discussing women’s healthcare, their failure to address highly skewed gender ratios in the patient reports and vaccination statistics that their office received on a monthly basis, and the relatively late opening of the city’s most substantial maternal health facilities, all point to male-centric priorities within the administration. Military health took priority not only because of the war, but because soldiers’ health conditions and facilities were so appallingly dismal. Thus, wartime health conditions reveal the continued haunting of modern China’s great specter, the “Sick Man of East Asia,” and two types of disease in the wartime capital: the Nationalist state, politically diseased, failed to protect its civilians and soldiers from common diseases.

Socioeconomic Differences in the Health of Black Union Soldiers during the American Civil War

This paper investigates patterns of socioeconomic difference in the wartime morbidity and mortality of black Union Army soldiers. Among the factors that contributed to a lower probability of contracting and dying from diseases were (1) lighter skin color, (2) a non-field occupation, (3) residence on a large plantation, and (4) residence in a rural area prior to enlistment. Patterns of disease-specific mortality and timing of death suggest that the differences in the development of immunity against diseases and in nutritional status prior to enlistment were responsible for the observed socioeconomic differences in wartime health. For example, the advantages of light-skinned soldiers over dark-skinned and of enlisted men formerly engaged in non-field occupations over field hands resulted from differences in nutritional status. The lower wartime mortality of ex-slaves from large plantations can be explained by their better-developed immunity as well as superior nutritional status. The results of this paper suggest that there were substantial disparities in the health of the slave population on the eve of the Civil War.

From Donor to Patient in 20 Minutes

From Donor to Patient in 20 Minutes

Socioeconomic Differences in the Health of Black Union Soldiers during the American Civil War

This article investigates patterns of socioeconomic difference in the wartime morbidity and mortality of black Union soldiers during the American Civil War. Among the factors that contributed to lower probabilities of contracting and dying of disease were lighter skin color, a nonfield occupation, residence on a large plantation, and residence in a rural area prior to enlistment. Patterns of disease-specific mortality and timing of death suggest that the differences in the development of immunity to disease and in nutritional status prior to enlistment were responsible for the observed socioeconomic differences in wartime health. For example, the advantages of light-skinned soldiers over dark-skinned and of enlisted men formerly engaged in nonfield occupations over field hands resulted from differences in nutritional status. The lower wartime mortality of ex-slaves from large plantations can be explained by their better-developed immunity and superior nutritional status. The results of this article suggest that there were substantial disparities in the health of the slave population on the eve of the Civil War.

Scotland's Health, 1919–1948, and: The National Health Service in Scotland: Origins and Ideals, 1900–1950 (review)

Reviewed by: Scotland's Health, 1919-1948, and: The National Health Service in Scotland: Origins and Ideals, 1900-1950 Marguerite Dupree Jacqueline Jenkinson . Scotland's Health, 1919-1948. Studies in the History of Medicine, vol. 2. Oxford, U.K.: Peter Lang, 2002. 505 pp. Ill. $60.95 (paperbound, 0-8204-5622-5). Morrice McCrae . The National Health Service in Scotland: Origins and Ideals, 1900-1950. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 2003. xvi + 288 pp. Ill. £25.00 (1-86232-216-3). Beginning in Britain on the Appointed Day, 5 July 1948, the National Health Service (NHS) was the result of separate legislation for England and Wales on the one hand, and for Scotland on the other. Charles Webster incorporates Scotland into his magisterial history of the NHS1 but suggests that the differences between Scotland and England and Wales were not significant; other commentators on the origins and early years of the NHS suggest that the differences were so great [End Page 474] that these authors limit their accounts to England and Wales. We are now fortunate to have two books that explore the distinctiveness of the patterns of disease and the nature of health care, health administration, and government policies toward health in Scotland during the years leading up to the establishment and implementation of the NHS. The books focus on the same period, from the end of the First World War until 1948, and not only do both authors argue that Scotland differed from England and Wales, but they are the first to elaborate the similarities and differences at length. At the same time, the books differ considerably from each other. Although there is some overlap, their emphases are distinct and, in the end, complementary. Jacqueline Jenkinson, author of Scottish Medical Societies and a coauthor of The Royal: The History of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, has written a highly structured and systematic book, concentrating on the personal health services, excluding mental health services and voluntary hospitals. In her introduction she establishes distinctive features of the Scottish population, economy, society, and morbidity and mortality patterns. Compared with England during the interwar years, Scotland displayed a unique combination of concentrated urbanization and heavy industry alongside remote regions of scattered population; deep-rooted poverty; severe housing problems; high levels of unemployment; and high morbidity and mortality rates (infant, maternal, and tuberculosis). Jenkinson then provides two chapters setting out the structure of health administration before and after 1929. In 1919, when the Ministry of Health was set up in England and Wales, a separate Board of Health was established for Scotland, composed not of civil servants but of "experts." In 1929 the secretary of state for Scotland became a cabinet office and the Board of Health became a department run by civil servants and was moved to Edinburgh. Jenkinson clearly describes the changes in administrative structure, and in the process she introduces Muriel Ritson, a pioneering woman health administrator, and shows that Ritson and other health administrators provided continuity through the administrative reorganizations. The next four chapters explore particular areas of health administration of major concern during the interwar period: infant and maternal welfare; the health of school-aged children and controversy over their nutrition; tuberculosis; and national health insurance. In the final chapter she resumes the chronological account, discussing the wartime health services and the creation of the National Health Service. Given the topical structure, there is inevitably repetition, but Jenkinson contributes useful tables setting out the wide variations in health patterns within Scotland. She also employs the Scottish experience to address controversies in the literature over the nature and extent of devolved authority, and over the process of policy formation, as well as historiographic controversies such as that between Charles Webster and Jay Winter over the health consequences of the First World War and economic depression in the interwar years, and Richard Titmus's view that warfare promoted welfare in the Second World War. W. Morrice McCrae's book is a revised version of his Ph.D. thesis, admirably undertaken in the Department of History at the University of Edinburgh after a successful career as a medical practitioner and administrator in the Scottish [End Page 475] Office. He effectively draws...

The Hill-Burton Act and Civil Rights: Expanding Hospital Care for Black Southerners, 1939-1960

THE HOSPITAL SURVEY AND CONSTRUCTION ACT--COMMONLY KNOWN as the Hill-Burton Act or simply Hill-Burton in recognition of its Senate sponsors, Lister Hill (D-Ala.) and Harold H. Burton (R-Ohio)--was debated in Congress and passed into law in 1946 at the height of the South's paradoxical status as the nation's neediest yet most politically powerful region. From 1947 to 1971 Hill-Burton underwrote the creation of a modern health care infrastructure with $3.7 billion in federal funding and $9.1 billion in matches from state and local governments. Space for nearly a half million beds was constructed in 10,748 projects, including nursing homes, mental health and other specialized facilities, and public health centers as well as hospitals. Edward H. Beardsley's seminal 1987 study of southern health care, A History of Neglect: Health Care for Blacks and Mill Workers in the Twentieth-Century South, contains the most nuanced and detailed historical analysis to date of Hill-Burton's impact on the South, where half the facilities were built. While recognizing that most participating southern hospitals remained closed to black physicians, Beardsley asserts that with the help of Hill-Burton projects Southerners of both races, but blacks particularly, began to enjoy an access to modern hospital care that they had never known before. (1) Most scholars since Beardsley have focused on Hill-Button's separate-but-equal clause and the program's failure to completely end racial discrimination in southern hospitals. This body of work at times views Hill-Burton in a deterministic light, with some scholars essentially sharing the view of integrationist medical activists that eliminating segregation in health care was a magic bullet that would end racial health disparities. This article posits a long civil rights movement in health care by surveying and elaborating on the historiography of Hill-Burton in the South and considering multiple factors that contributed to the expansion of hospital care for blacks and whites, particularly in underserved rural areas. The essay focuses mainly on the fifteen-year period from 1939, when hospital construction was first debated in Congress as part of proposals to establish a national health plan, to 1954, when the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka declared segregation unconstitutional and inherently unequal in public elementary and secondary education. Finally, this article uses North Carolina as a case study to evaluate Hill-Burton's record in improving blacks' access to hospital care during the two decades before full compliance with integration was made a condition of federal aid in all health care programs as a result of the Supreme Court's 1963 Simkins v. Cone decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Medicare and Medicaid legislation of 1965. (2) Hill-Burton contributed to a series of major transitions in the life of the South and the nation. Scholars commonly cite the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 as the New Deal's end point, but Hill-Burton was the last and perhaps the most progressive expression of redistributive New Deal liberalism. Lawrence J. Clark, a health administrator and policy analyst, and his coauthors judged the act to be one of the most ambitious efforts for the development of social capital to that time. Hill-Burton was the first federal program to incorporate a graduated, need-based allocation formula that favored the South, paving the way for federal sponsorship of health, education, and welfare as well as costly new infrastructure that made Sun Belt prosperity possible while allowing southern states to maintain low taxes. As an outgrowth of Florida Democratic senator Claude D. Pepper's Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education, Hill-Burton was among the first and most successful examples of a new postwar brand of federal reform that garnered bipartisan support by blending centralized planning, economic development, and a rationale for domestic spending based on national defense. …

Wealth Accumulation and the Health of Union Army Veterans, 1860-1870.

How did the wartime health of Union Army recruits affect their wealth accumulation through 1870? Wounds and exposure to combat had strong negative effects on subsequent savings, as did illnesses while in the service. The impact of poor health was particularly strong for unskilled workers. Health was a powerful determinant of nineteenth-century economic mobility. Infectious diseases' influences on wealth accumulation suggest that the economic gains from the improvement of the disease environment should be enormous. The direct economic costs of the Civil War were probably much greater than previously thought, given the persistent adverse health effects of wartime experiences.

Shaping the health of the nation: development of human resources in Eritrea.

Looks at human resources (HR) issues with regard to the health care system in Eritrea, the newest nation in Africa with a population of 3.5 million. Notes the problems of poor infrastructure, high mortality rates and poverty. Considers the present situation and future requirements in terms of HR. Features programmes being established aimed at bridging this gap and looks particularly at initiatives aimed at enabling ex-combatants who have wartime health care experience to train further as health workers.

The development of the Hill-Burton legislation: interests, issues and compromises.

The Hill-Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act has its roots in the social health and welfare programs of the New Deal. This paper traces its development and the positions of three groups-the hospital industry, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Senate Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education-on four issues: the nature of federal funding to states, the use of public funds by private hospitals, the oversight powers of a Federal Hospital Council, and health services for the poor. The analysis involves two lines of thought: the political strategy of incrementalism and the roles of the three interest groups in reaching compromises to quickly pass an "unsponsored" bill. Relevance to the current effort to pass a single payer national health insurance is explored.