ORGANIZED HEALTH WORK In the United States the problem of the proper or desirable division of public health authority between Federal, State, and local agencies is one as yet unsettled. By the Federal Constitu tion, the State is the ultimate authority and each State jealously guards its autonomy in matters pertaining to public health.
In the same way the local authorities demand ultimate power in relationship to certain health functions which relate wholly to the health problems of the local community. The development of many non-governmental health agencies is also to be considered in the evaluation of public health work in the United States.
The chief questions of recent years have related to the inequality of the distribution of the benefits of modern public health and medical science. Thus recent years have seen the conduct of a National Health Survey to determine the amount of chronic disabling illness and the extent of medical service available for its care. Innumerable surveys have also been made of local, State, and national health services. As a result there has been proposed a National Health program, involving the appropriation of vast funds to be distributed to the individual States as grants-in-aid for specific health purposes. Moreover, under the Social Security Act of 1934 extensive funds have been appropriated to the United States Public Health Service and the Bureau of Ma ternal and Child Welfare in the Department of Labor to carry on ex tensive preventive, medical, and educational services in the individual States. Under this system, the States must match the appropriation of the national Government and must submit plans for the approval of national bureaus before grants are made.
There is also widespread agitation for compulsory sickness insurance in some of the individual States and by certain agencies which would ask the Federal Government to provide funds for establishing such systems in the individual States.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Annual Reports of Chief Medical Officer to the Min
istry of Public Health ; Annual Reports of the Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education; Annual Reports of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops ; Simon, English Sanitary Institutions (I8go) ; First Report and Minutes of Evidence of the Royal Commission on Local Government (1923-27) ; Lumley, The Public Health Acts (1923) ; Robertson and Porter, Sanitary Law and Practice (1927); Bannington, English Public Health Administration (1915) (another edition in preparation) ; Hamer and Hutt, A Manual of Hygiene (1925) ; Hope and Stallybrass, A Textbook of Public Health (1926) ; Parkes and Kenwood, Hygiene and Public Health (1923) ; Newsholme, Vital Statistics; Mess, Factory Legislation and its Administration (1926) ; Hutchins and Harrison, A History of Factory Legislation (1926) ; Collis and Greenwood, The Health of the Industrial Worker (1921) ; M. J. Rosenau, Preventive Medicine and Hygiene (1921) ; Wm. H. Park, Public Health and Hygiene (1928) ; Preventive Medicine and Public Health (2 vols.) (1928) ; Chas. V. Chapin, Municipal Sanitation in the United States (19oo) ; The Public Health Service Monograph No. io, Institute of Government Research (1923) ; James A. Tobey, National Government and Public Health, Institute of Government Research (1926) ; Robt. D. Leigh, Federal Health Admin istration in the United States (1927) ; American Child Health Associa tion, Health Survey of 86 Cities (1925) ; Carl E. McCoombs, City Health Administration (1927) ; M. J. Ravanel, A Half-Century of Public Health (1921); Harry H. Moore, Public Health in the United States (1927) and American Medicine and the People's Health (1927) ; Louis I. Dublin, Health and Wealth (1928) ; Nathan Sinai, Organiza tion and Administration of Public Health (1933) ; Committee on the Costs of Medical Care: "Final Report, Medical Care for the Ameri can People," University of Chicago Press. (H. E.; M. Fa.)