By Anna Garlin Spencer. Through the consolidation of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, the American Vigilance Association (which was the later name for the American Vigilance Committee) the American Purity Alliance, and other agencies for social service, the present American Social Hygiene Association came into existence in 1914.
Continue Reading »Protecting and advancing the health of our nation’s people and contributing to the delivery of health care world-wide is very important work and the main task of the Public Health Service (PHS). The PHS is a principal part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the major health agency of the Federal Government.
Continue Reading »Freedom from political domination is perhaps responsible more than any other single factor for the public health progress in Cincinnati. This change was brought about in I910, and with it came a reorganization of the health department, until now it parallels an ideal organization recommended by Dr. C. E. A. Winslow, chairman of the Committee on Municipal Health Department Practice of the American Public Health Association. The fact that the members of the Cincinnati Board of Health are appointed for ten years, and that only one member retires every two years, guarantees continuity of program and policy. This is a wise provision of our charter. All members of the health department are civil service appointees and devote their full time to public service.
Continue Reading »The influence of social work on public health administration is found in the development of every branch of that service in the past fifty years. The recreation movement, the child welfare movement, and such special developments as workingmen’s compensation in the industrial field have all been influenced by the humanitarian interests of the forces interested in social work, and each of these has had a direct bearing upon the health of the several communities in this country.
Continue Reading »Even the briefest account of the family life of the Negro must include a consideration of the history back of the present Negro family. This history naturally divides itself into three periods: Africa, slavery, and freedom. While the African period, it must be remembered, does not claim our attention because an unbroken social tradition still affects the present formation of the Negro family -although traces of the African tradition were detected in marriage ceremonies near the opening of the present century —it is necessary to call attention to this period because of subsequent events. In Africa the Negro lived under regulated sex relations which were adapted to his social and physical environment. It was through the destruction in America of these institutionalized sex relations that slavery was able to bring about complete subordination.
Continue Reading »There are too many deaths among Negro children today, for the good of the Negro race and for the good of the country as a whole. The Negro race needs a stronger and more healthy younger generation to help it combat successfully the many obstacles which it must meet. In addition to the normal struggle for existence, the black man in America must endure a number of handicaps. He must make his living by means of the lowest-paid and most unhealthful jobs in industry, though this condition is improving somewhat in certain sections of the country. He must struggle for life itself against unfavorable environments in the form of the least healthful neighborhoods and the oldest and most unsanitary houses.
Continue Reading »For the purpose of this discussion we shall define social action as the systematic, conscious effort directly to influence the basic social conditions and policies out of which arise the problems of social adjustment and maladjustment to which our service as social workers is addressed. This definition itself may not satisfy all of us to begin with, for it has at least one debatable limitation. While it does not deny, neither does it specifically acknowledge or emphasize the potential and actual indirect influence upon the total social scene which may emanate from the specific services social workers render to particular individuals and groups, through the traditional primary task of helping people to find and use their own strength and the resources around them for the solution of their own problems and the fulfillment of their own lives.
Continue Reading »Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones (1837-1930): Labor Activist and Organizer, Speaker, Teacher
Continue Reading »Presentation given by S. Sheldon Glueck, Instructor, Criminology and Penology, Department of Social Ethics, Harvard University, at the Proceedings Of The National Conference Of Social Work Fifty-First Annual Session, 1924. “These conditions make it clear that we must first deal with the traditional need for definite, legislative prescriptions in advance, of the length of service attached to each offense, so that the power to deprive of liberty may not be abused; and secondly, we have to deal with the associated problem of lack of co-ordination of effort between the courts, the penal institutions, the parole officers, and social agencies and workers.”
Continue Reading »Presentation by J. E. Hagerty, Dean, College of Commerce and Journalism, Ohio State University, at The National Conference Of Social Work Fifty-First Annual Session, 1924. “I am not in sympathy with the notion that the immigrant should forget and lose the language and the customs and traditions of the country from which he came…The foreigner, however, should learn the language of the country and the laws of the country. Much of the immigrant’s crime has been committed through ignorance, from the lack of knowledge of what he can do and what he cannot do.”
Continue Reading »