Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
Local health machinery should guarantee protection against the evils
mentioned in preceding chapters. In general, one man is better than
three to execute, although three may be better than one to legislate.
Where small communities do not wish to have the entire state sanitary
code rigidly administered, they can adopt New York's method of a
legislative board of three members, headed by an executive, whose
business it is to act, not talk; to watch subordinates, and to enforce
rigidly and continuously ordinances passed by the board. The National
Bureau of Census places under the general heading Health and Sanitation
the following activities: health administration, street cleaning and
refuse disposal, sewers and sewage disposal. Sanitarians generally
emphasize also the health significance of efficient water service.
A community's health programme should be clearly outlined in the annual
budget. Where health work is given funds without specification of the
kinds of work to be done, serious evils may be overlooked and lesser
evils permitted to monopolize the energies of health officers. Again,
after money has been voted to prevent an evil, records should be made
of work done when done, and of money spent when spent, so that any
diversion will be promptly made known. The best present guides to
budget making, to educational health reports, and to records that show
efficiency or inefficiency of health administrators are the budget and
report of the department of health for New York City, and the story of
their evolution told in _Making a Municipal Budget_, by the Bureau of
Municipal Research.
To find out whether local machinery is adequate, the reader must
enumerate the things that need to be done in his community, remembering
that in all parts of the United States to-day there are sanitary laws
offering protection against dangers to health, excepting some dangers
not understood until recently, such as child labor, dangerous trades,
lack of safety devices. Adequate local protection, however, will not
become permanent until adequate state machinery is secured.
State health machinery should be of two kinds,--fact-gathering and
executive supervision through inspection. The greatest service of state
boards of health is to educate localities as to their own needs, using
the experience of all communities to teach each community in how far
its health administration menaces itself and its neighbors. In addition
to registration of contagious diseases, facts as to deaths and births
should be registered. State health boards should "score" communities as
dairies and milk shops are now being scored by the National Bureau of
Animal Industries and several boards of health. When communities
persist in maintaining a public nuisance and in failing to enforce
health laws, state health machinery should be made to accomplish by
force what it has failed to accomplish by education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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