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New Archives in History of Public Health Policy

Posted: 29 Nov 2010 08:15 PM PST

Cool new archival resources on the history of public health policy:

In February of 2007, Harvard Medical School's Center for the History of Medicine started the Foundations in Public Health Policy program in an attempt to process and make available a number of "hidden collections" related to public health. These collections are now open to research.

The Allan Macy Butler Papers: Butler, an academic, pediatrician, researcher, and political activist, was Chief of the Children's Medical Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School from 1942 to 1960.

The Leona Baumgartner Papers: Baumgartner was the first woman commissioner of the New York City Department of Health, 1954 to 1962, and was later a national advocate and adviser to the federal government on the expansion of public health efforts in maternal health, preventive medicine, and international aid

The Howard Hiatt Papers: Hiatt was the first Herrman L. Blumgart Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician-in-Chief at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Mass from 1963 to 1972. Staff also processed a separate archival collection of Dean's Records from Hiatt's time as leader of the Harvard School of Public Health from 1972 to 1984.

The David D. Rutstein Papers: Rustein headed the Harvard Medical School Department of Preventive Medicine from 1947 to 1971 and hosted a television program on WGBH, The Facts of Medicine, one of the first uses of television to inform the public about local and national health concerns and current research.

Also available are the papers of epidemiologist Alexander Langmuir (1953-1972), the class notes of Harvard School of Public Health student Irma S. Jarcho (1944-1945),
the papers of James L. Whittenberger (1933-1963), who studied the physiology of respiration and effects of air contamination on respiratory diseases, and the papers of Richard Pearson Strong (1911-2004), who the first Professor of Tropical Medicine at Harvard, and between 1913 and 1934 made several expeditions to afflicted areas in South and Central America and Africa to investigate diseases and obtain material for his laboratory and teaching work.

Since the Foundations of Public Health Policy initiative began, the project team has made incredible progress in processing manuscript collections, and we will continue to test our collection discovery tools, engage in outreach activities and communication with the public health and archives communities, and work with public health researchers and scholars in cultivating the acquisition of related collections. For more information on these collections, and links to online finding aids and digitized content, or to participate in a survey about our collection discovery tools, visit www.countway.harvard.edu/fphp, or contact Michael Dello Iacono, Project Archivist, at mpd13@hms.harvard.edu.

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(h/t H-SCI-MED-TECH listserv)