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Food hygiene

Despite the broad shift over the course of the twentieth century away from communicable disease towards chronic conditions, infectious disease continued to pose problems. One of the most common was …

Heart disease

How did heart disease come to be identified as a major challenge to public health in Britain? In this Step Peder Clark a PhD student from the Centre for History …

Denial and Delay

In this step Dr Alex Mold and Virginia Berridge discuss the slow transition from evidence to policy and practice in the case of smoking and lung cancer. They discuss Doll …

Challenging the epidemiological transition

The idea of the epidemiological transition – a shift from infectious to chronic disease as the leading cause of sickness and death – has been questioned. In this Step, we …

The epidemiological transition

The post-war period saw varying challenges for public health with the rise of chronic disease. In this Step Peder Clark looks at the ‘epidemiological transition’. We learn what it was, …

Summary of Week 1

We have now reached the end of Week 1. We now have a clearer understanding of how public health was defined, structured, and who was responsible for ensuring good public …

Individual Responsibility

In this Step, we examine the growing role for the individual in maintaining their health and how this came to be regarded as a public, as well as individual, health …

Statutory and non-statutory organisations

Whilst the state has been central to the provision of public health services, over time this role has been performed by other groups too. In this Step we explore the …

2012- Present

In this video Dalya Marks discusses how the role of public health returns to the local government. She will discuss the different difficulties associated with this move, who it affected, …

1974-2012

In this Step we discuss the removal of public health services from local government in 1974 and their re-location within the NHS. We explore the reasons why public health services …

1948-1974

Here Martin Gorsky, Deputy Director of the Centre for History in Public Health, discusses public health structures, explaining why public health services were located in local government rather than the …

Definitions: problems and solutions

In this Step we consider how the health problems experienced by the population, and the solutions offered to these by health services and other actors, are fundamental to our understanding …

Definitions: structures, services and actors

Here we look at defining the main actors and service structures involved in the delivery of public health services in post-war Britain. We will learn about the changing role of …

What is public health?

Here, we show how the idea of public health and its definition have either evolved or remained the same in Britain since World War II. What is ‘public health’? Is …