Voluntary Health Agencies Research Articles

Salaries and Related Personnel Practices in Voluntary Social and Health Agencies in New York City, September, 1958

Salaries and Related Personnel Practices in Voluntary Social and Health Agencies in New York City, September, 1958

The development of community health services.

TODAY S PRACTICE of providing community health services through local units was developed nearly a half century ago. It was well suited to the most critical health problems of that time and has continuously proved its value in bringing public health to the people. In recent years. however, there has been little extension of the traditional pattern of local health services. Many parts of the country still have no organized local health services. Other areas have services which are only fragmentary in nature. This may stem from the many changes in health problems which have occurred over the years. It may be that new and additional resources-such as voluntary health agencies. industrial health programs, insurance schemes, and other prepayment plansare now providing, more acceptably, some services which in the past were supplied by the health department. Or perhaps the greater interest of private physicians in preventive medicine coupled with better methods of communication and transportation and increased public enlightenment regarding the individual's own responsibility for his personal health have reduced the need for organized health departments. Whatever the cause might be in view of the many changes which have occurred, both in health problems and in resources for meeting them the entire concept and structure for the delivery of community health services should be reexamined.

American Heart Association Scientific Sessions

The Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association, a three day long meeting, were held in October in San Francisco. More than 3000 physicians, research scientists and laymen attended the Sessions. The meeting marked the 10th anniversary of the American Heart Association as a national voluntary health agency. The prevalence and severity of cardiac problems make this a subject of extreme interest to all concerned with health work. Therefore, the Journal publishes below short summaries of certain papers presented at the Scientific Sessions.

Experience with a community health council questionnaire for practicing physicians.

A questionnaire provided a means whereby participating physicians could and did report on the health and welfare needs of persons who came to them for medical care. The greatest unmet needs for services or facilities in San Francisco were alcoholism; other mental illness or emotional disturbance; paralytic conditions (other than poliomyelitis), including those resulting from strokes; arthritis and rheumatism; cancer; and mental retardation. The response to the questionnaire indicated an unexpected degree of interest on the part of physicians. The medical profession as a whole is seldom able to fulfill completely its traditional and ideal role of serving as physician to the community in guiding and directing all health activities. Much of the planning and many of the research, educational, and service functions in the fiels of community health are now recognized as responsibilities of the public and voluntary health and welfare agencies.

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION, INC.

To the Editor: —Knowing that doctors, of all people, demand for themselves and champion for others the right of fair and equal opportunity and the privilege of individual enterprise, I am addressing myself to the members of my own profession in the hope that they will help us to maintain the Heart Association as a free American institution. During the past ten years, spearheaded by the work of the Association, great progress has been made in prevention and treatment of rheumatic fever and in development of new techniques to correct congenital and rheumatic abnormalities of the heart. We are now beginning to glimpse where and how the answers to strokes, coronary disease, and hypertension may be found. However, as the American Heart Association begins its second decade as a national voluntary health agency, we find its continued success being threatened by a movement that is serious in nature and wide

United Funds and Voluntary Health Agencies

CA: A Cancer Journal for CliniciansVolume 8, Issue 4 p. 135-136 ArticleFree Access United funds and voluntary health agencies First published: July/August 1958 https://doi.org/10.3322/canjclin.8.4.135AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume8, Issue4July/August 1958Pages 135-136 RelatedInformation

Knowledge and utilization of health resources by public assistance recipients. I. Public health and preventive medical resources.

DURING THE summer of 1955 a study was made in Syracuse, N. Y., to ascertain the extent to which recipients of public assistance utilize health services available to them and to compare their utilization with that of other socioeconomic groups. An attempt was also made to determine whether the health education technics utilized by voluntary and official community health agencies reach public welfare recipients to the same extent as other population groups, or whether an intensification of or change in these technics is indicated. The project was a joint undertaking of the New York State Departments of Social Welfare and of Health, the State University College of Medicine at Syracuse, the Syracuse City Department of Health, and the Onondaga County Department of Public Welfare. This report will describe the methodology and present the findings concerning the knowledge and utilization of public preventive medical services. A second report will describe the findings relative to therapeutic services.*

Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease, Summary of Public Health and Voluntary Health Agency Activities in

pact of the book has been strengthened and its influence has been increased. One of the outstanding services rendered to readers is the practicality ol instructions for achieving objectives. The various outlines, tables, and examples that are given are usefully detailed. No attempt has been made to set safety instruction apart. Instead, the desirability of integrating safety education into school curriculums and into home training has been stressed. The importance of the human factors in accident causation has been given serious consideration without deprecating the necessity for doing everything possible to render the home, school, farm, industrial, and highway environments less hazardous. The chapter on Psychological Considerations is very well handled. Controversial areas have been carefully avoided and arbitrary statements are conspicuous by their absence. This text will find wide usage among persons who must orient themselves quickly to accident prevention and to overworked teachers upon whose shoulders safety teaching responsibilities are placed with little warning and too often with little preparation. ALBERT L. CHAPMAN

HOW A VOLUNTARY HEALTH AGENCY CAN HELP ME AS A TEACHER OF HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION*

Journal of School HealthVolume 26, Issue 8 p. 249-252 HOW A VOLUNTARY HEALTH AGENCY CAN HELP ME AS A TEACHER OF HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION* JOSEPH A. CONFORTI, JOSEPH A. CONFORTI Teacher Chicago Public Schools 12864 So. Lowe Avenue, Chicago 28, Ill.Search for more papers by this author JOSEPH A. CONFORTI, JOSEPH A. CONFORTI Teacher Chicago Public Schools 12864 So. Lowe Avenue, Chicago 28, Ill.Search for more papers by this author First published: October 1956 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.1956.tb04833.xCitations: 1 * Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements in a graduate course in Public School Health Problems at Chicago Teachers College. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume26, Issue8October 1956Pages 249-252 RelatedInformation

How Schools and Voluntary Agencies Can Work Together to Improve School Health Programs

Abstract This statement was prepared by the Health Education Division of AAHPER and has been approved by the AAHPER Board of Directors. A committee of the Division, chaired by Sol Lifson of the National Tuberculosis Association, worked co-operatively with educators and representatives of the voluntary health agencies in drawing up these principles for working together. They are intended to serve as a guide to personnel of schools and voluntary health agencies.

Aims and program of the National Tuberculosis Association.

Fifty years ago last June, in 1904, the American Medical Association held its Annual Meeting in Atlantic City, N. J. This meeting was particularly notable because many of the leading physicians of that time took advantage of that meeting to establish the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, later simplified to National Tuberculosis Association. These leaders included, among many others, William Henry Welch, William Osier, Hermann M. Biggs, Edward Livingston Trudeau, and Lawrence F. Flick. The establishment of this pioneering voluntary health agency in connection with an Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association is symbolic of the close and cordial relationships that have existed between the two associations for over half a century. The chief way in which this new association was different from preceding organizations was that it represented a definite combination of medical and nonmedical interests unified to tackle a specific health problem that

The medical profession and the voluntary health agencies.

The average physician is not fully aware of the great number of voluntary public health agencies that exist throughout the country. He may know of two or three in his community and of a few national ones, but beyond that, unless he is very active in community affairs, civic matters, or public health, he usually has no knowledge of the number or types of programs of most of these agencies. This lack of knowledge may represent a serious deficiency, for it may indirectly prevent the patient from getting badly needed services. One of the outstanding characteristics of the American way of life, in which America differs markedly from the totalitarian countries, is the profusion of voluntary agencies that exist freely without restraining government control or guidance. The freedom of speech and freedom of assembly that are among the major characteristics of our democracy allow and even encourage individuals to band

Medical association participation in solving school health problems.

SCHOOL HEALTH AS A STATE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION ACTIVITY The nature of the relationships of local medical societies to other community groups concerned with child health is determined largely by the leadership that state medical associations provide. Practicing physicians initiate these community relationships and determine policies concerning them, but it is the medical society staff that must perform the many administrative duties that make these policies effective. Continuity is essential to effective long-term action by the profession in the community. The school health program is of great importance to physicians and their medical societies because it reaches all of the future citizens of the community during the formative years of their lives. Its success depends on cooperative relationships among practicing physicians and dentists, the several professions in public health and education, voluntary health agencies, and the organizations representing parents of school-age children. Practicing physicians and their medical societies have provided effective

"Multiphasic" screening tests.

The extensive employment of mass methods for detection of tuberculosis, syphilis, diabetes and other diseases by official and voluntary health agencies has led quite logically to the idea that it might be advantageous to combine various diagnostic screening tests, instead of organizing separate campaigns, each with a single test. Thus, multiple screening proposes to provide a series of rapid, highly technical diagnostic facilities for large groups of adults, at low cost and, for the most part, at community expense. Various types of tests have been suggested for inclusion in the screening unit. They are conducted in series. Registration, chiefly for identification, is the first step, with a record of age, sex, marital status, weight and height. No detailed history is provided for. The blood pressure, diastolic and systolic, is taken. A urine sample is procured, to be tested for albumin, sugar, sediment and, perhaps, urobilinogen. A

The American Heart Association as a national voluntary public health agency.

The role of the voluntary health agencies in this country is well understood. Tuberculosis, blindness, venereal disease, cancer, and other major public health problems have been attacked by them with notable success, some for as long as 50 years. There is a well established pattern of cooperation with official health agencies and with organized medicine. In its newly added role as a voluntary public health agency, it is important for the American Heart Association to understand these principles and patterns that are discussed here briefly with special emphasis on partnership with nonmedical community leaders, the relationship with the official agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, and on socialized medicine. Good public health work by voluntary organizations is a manifest of the concern of the medical profession with the health of the public and our first bulwark against compulsory government controlled medicine.

Diagnosis of pulmonary lesions discovered by mass roentgenographic survey.

Official and voluntary health agencies have in recent years used a technic of mass roentgenography of the chest1which is reaching hundreds of thousands of persons throughout the country. The small photoroentgen film used in this technic is not diagnostic, but it generally indicates the presence of an abnormality which must be further identified by the usual 14 by 17 inch (35 by 43 cm.) diagnostic roentgenogram and other studies. The methods used for the identification of these pulmonary lesions shown on the roentgenogram, whether they were unsuspected prior to the mass roentgenographic survey or whether they occurred in patients with vague pulmonary complaints, form the basis of this report. Such lesions are essentially chronic. Procedure.— The diagnosis in the patient with a pulmonary lesion visible in the roentgenogram will be considered from two viewpoints. First, ordinary diagnostic procedures will be discussed in the order of their usual application.

TRENDS

ON THE first of February, the Federal Security Agency submitted to the President and Congress its tenth annual report, for the fiscal year 1949, that is, the year ending June 30, 1949. The Administrator's Summary reviews briefly the activities of the Agency's constituent organization. The following excerpts are quoted directly from this summary report. The Public Health Service No brief summary can cover the vast range of activities performed by the Public Health Service. It cannot suggest the close working relationships of the Service with State and local health authorities, voluntary health agencies, research and training institutions, hospital agencies, and professional organizations. Technical and consultative assistance, together with financial aid, from the Public Health Service has become so much a part of State and local health activity throughout the country that these services are taken for granted. Much of the work of the Public Health Service, as in medical research and the development of new methods for the control of serious diseases, is necessarily long-term. But results are constantly being obtained and more widely applied in state and local programs which directly affect the lives of millions of Americans. During the fiscal year, for example, Public Health Service teams took chest x-rays of more than 1.5 million persons in tuberculosis surveys sponsored by some of our large cities.

The Chronic Disease Study of the California Department of Public Health

PUBLIC health agencies have only recently begun to face the problem of chronic disease. The need for action has been amply demonstrated. The facts concerning the aging of the population and its influence on chronic disease mortality and morbidity are all well known. These facts offer no surprises to welfare agencies, hospitals, voluntary health agencies, physicians, nurses, and the millions of families who cannot ignore the day-to-day problems of chronic disease. Viewed historically, it is appropriate here in Boston to note that the first significant attack on this problem by a state health department was that launched in Massachusetts in 1926. Since that time, other states have entered this field but for the most part their activities have been limited to cancer control. Recent events provide concrete evidence of growing public health concern with the problem of chronic disease. First, the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Public Welfare Association, working together in 1947, developed and published a -basic, joint

A Statement on the Relationships of the Voluntary Health Agencies to the School Health Program

A Statement on the Relationships of the Voluntary Health Agencies to the School Health Program

Voluntary Health Agencies and the Schools

Voluntary Health Agencies and the Schools