TABLE OF CONTENTS Peace Brings Prospect of Public Health Advancement... Consider Your Neighbor's Situation Before You Reopen.. Be Progressive: Attend A. P. H. A. Meeting..... Influenza and Ohio's Local Public Health Organization.. Opportunity to Strengthen Health Organization Here... Treatment Most Important Means of Checking Venereal Disease... Reporting and Printing the Facts in Akron..... Keep Your Address Up to Date, Mr. Soldier. Three More Members Enter War Service... Government Finances Venereal Disease Work in Ohio.. Labor Takes Stand for Health....... Controlling the Influenza Epidemic in Ohio... Experiments in Air Conditioning the Home. By EMERY R. HAYHURST.. PAGE Public Health Nursing Service: Report for September, 1918. DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS BY DIVISIONS, OCTOBER, 1918: Division of Communicable Diseases - Division of Plumbing - Division of Public Health Education and Tuberculosis - Division of Labora- tories - Division of Sanitary Engineering - Bureau of Publicity, Peace Brings Prospect of EDITORIALS Peace! The announcement opens up a vista of wonderful possibilities for advancement in the field of public health. Turning from the works of war to the works of peace, the American people possess a new spirit of patriotism, a new national consciousness that cannot die out with the end of the war. This regenerated patriotism. is a thing of peace as well as of war- a spirit which will lead to united interest in national advancement as well as to the waving of flags in celebration of victory. One fundamental phase of the national advancement which we may confidently expect is increased activity for the betterment of the public health. Present conditions all favor such a development. The war has demonstrated the prime importance of maintaining high standards of health as a means of keeping up national efficiency. The men returning from the army have received sanitary training as well as military training, and as they take up civil pursuits again they are going to demand. that civil authorities give them health protection equal to that which they have received while in the army. The men in the medical forces of the army, recruited from among physicians all over the country, have received invaluable training in the science of sanitation, and will provide ample personnel for any program of public health protection which may be undertaken. For the first time in history, with the impetus afforded by the war, the country will have at its command an adequate supply of nurses, many of whom can be enlisted in public health work. In the development which is at hand, Ohio must do her part. As she has given bountifully to the work of winning the war and establishing the supremacy of democratic ideals, so must she support the program by which the nation can maintain its place as a defender of freedom. Ohio must maintain the health of her people if she is to play her just part in the reconstruction of the world. To give proper health protection, Ohio must remodel the antiquated public health machinery which is being so severely strained by modern needs. In brief, adequate supervisory authority must be placed in the hands of the State and means must be provided by which trained men can be placed in service as local health officers. A program with this as an object is to be set in motion this winter. True patriotism demands that this program be given as firm support as any Liberty Loan or War Savings campaign. Consider Your Neighbor's * Recurrence of an influenza outbreak which was supposed to be over is the price several Ohio communities hav had to pay for being too hasty in rescinding closing orders adopted as measures to restrict the spread of the disease. Cambridge, Coshocton, New Lexington, Bellaire, Bridgeport and Martins Ferry are among the places in which such recurrent epidemics have been noted. The local health authorities in these towns authorized the reopening of public gathering places when the situations in their districts appeared to justify such action. Although the disease had died out in the towns, however, it was still prevalent in surrounding rural districts. Consequently, as soon as theatres, churches and other places were reopened in the towns, the disease was reintroduced by visitors from the country. The State Department of Health cannot emphasize too strongly the statement that the advisability of rescinding closing orders is not to be determined by considering conditions in one health district alone. Conditions in surrounding districts must also be taken into consideration. No board of health should authorize the resumption of public gatherings in its district when influenza is still prevalent in a nearby district from which visitors are likely to come to attend the reopened places of public assemblage. Be Progressive: Attend * The second week in December will see progressive health officials from all over North America assembled in Chicago for ine annual meeting of the American Public Health Association. It is to be hoped that among this number will be a good representation from Ohio's health forces. Health officials who have neglected joining the Public Health Association should send in their applications at once. The State Department of Health will be pleased to receive applications for membership in the Association and forward them to the proper authorities. The membership fee is five dollars yearly, which gives in addition to membership a year's subscription to the monthly American Journal of Public Healththe Association's official organ, which costs non-members four dollars a year. If you are not already a member, show your interest in public health progress by applying for membership immediately and by attending the convention in Chicago December 9-12. Influenza and Ohio's Local Last February the OHIO PUBLIC HEALTH JOURNAL published a brief article entitled "The Smallpox Situation and Ohio's Local Health Organization," telling how the smallpox epidemic was "showing up" the inefficiency of the State's local public health machinery. A similar article might be based on the influenza outbreak. Not many local health departments have entirely broken down under the strain, it is true, although there have been several such instances. very many communities, however, a woeful amount of inefficiency and ignorance has been displayed. As in the case which formed the basis of the article last February, all that many local health officials were able to do was to call upon the State Department of Health for help, and, as was also the case last fall, the inadequate force at the disposal of the Department was unable to give the local communities the kind of assistance they needed. We quote from the article in last February's JOURNAL: "Health protection in any true sense is not available to a large part of the population of Ohio. It cannot be made available by appointing the village marshal as health officer at four dollars per year. It cannot be made available by the present State Department of Health, with an appropriation of little more than two cents per capita for the State. It can be had only by the formation of health districts sufficiently large to provide for the services of a competent health officer at a reasonable salary and providing back of the local organization a State organization sufficiently extensive to supervise the health administration of five million people." Opportunity to Strengthen * It is difficult to find much good in the influenza epidemic. Those who are optimistically inclined, however, may re joice over the manner in which it has brought the public health machinery of the State into the limelight. The public mind is in a receptive. mood for suggestions for strengthening this part of the governmental organization, and persons interested in achieving this result should not fail to improve the opportunity thus offered. The public, it should be remembered, is thinking of the health department as a means of controlling an epidemic after it has appeared. It must be educated to the broader view that the function of the health department is to prevent the appearance of disease to make conditions. such that disease will have the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining a foothold. This advanced viewpoint, while vitally important in measuring the efficiency of a health organization, does not logically represent so great a change in popular thought. Guided by judicious educational efforts on the part of believers in a strong public health organization, the public will readily accept the idea of the health department as a preventive, rather than a curative, factor. The time for such educational work is now ripe, when the public is devoting more than a usual amount of thought to the health department. When the true importance of an efficient health organization is made clear to voters and legislators, health officials can devote less time to struggling for necessary funds and more to constructive, resultproducing work. Treatment Most Important Means of Checking Venereal Disease The percentages according to which Ohio's Federal allotment for venereal disease prevention has been apportioned to the several phases of this work, stated elsewhere in this magazine, express the relative degrees of importance assigned to these lines of activity by competent authorities. |