Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Abstract: The first chapter was an overview of the history of Community Health spread out over thousands of years. It starts off talking about the beginning of Community Health. Then it goes on to progressing through the different time periods and different health changes that occurred, for better and for worse. In the introduction it gives you the definition of health, health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well being and not merely the absence of disease and health. Now having a good idea for what health really is it helps to further understand the issues that came up over time. It was later determined that health cannot be defined as a state because it is ever changing. The book has chose a new definition of the word health. Health is a dynamic state or condition of the human organism that is multidimensional, physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, and occupational.
Community health dates back all the way to 500 B.C. The first hospital was created during the Roman Empire. During this time the spiritual era of public health began. In that time every disease was blamed on spiritual factors, not actual health problems. As you would expect many health problems began to occur. Many epidemics lead to the death of millions in this time. Leprosy was one of the earliest epidemics to hit. The deadliest epidemic to hit during this time was the plague. The plague was also known as the black death. With all the plagues there was a total of 25 million deaths in Europe alone. In some of the most severe spots only one out of ten people survived.
The next time period was the start of an improvement in health. The Renaissance period was characterized by a rebirth of thinking about the nature of the world and humankind. One big step was that there was a growing belief that disease was caused by environmental factors not spiritual. By changing one belief that lead to the first signs of many new diseases.
When the 18th century rolled around living conditions were still very poor, cities were over crowded, and water was unsanitary, however, one big achievement was that in 1796 Dr. Edward Jenner demonstrated the process of vaccination as a protection against small pox. Later on the government started to get more and more involved in the health issues going on. Many new organizations were created to help fight the spread of disease.
In the 20th century Community Health really was starting to be taken seriously. The birth of the first national level volunteer health agencies were started. The social security act of 1935 marked the beginning of the first major government involvement in the health industry. In the 2000’s Bioterrorism became an issue, bioterrorism is the threat or release of biological agents for the purpose of influencing the conduct of government intimidating or coercing a civilian population to further political or social objectives.

Reflection: After reading chapter one I was very intrigued to find out the history behind Community Health and the many issues that affected it. People involved in any health field should be pleased with the progress made over time, which dates all the way back to 500 B.C. It is crazy to imagine that people were actually thinking about health back then. Peoples beliefs changed many times over the thousands of years, but to me that makes it more interesting, to see how each generation learned and then evolved their Health theories over prior knowledge.
Health obviously started off with little or no care. What can you really expect though. Very few people were able to get an education and I am sure health issues were not on the top of their list to learn about. When I read about how people during the middle ages thought health problems were spiritual I was kind of stunned. After thinking though the people of that time had no prior knowledge to go on, so now they don’t sound as crazy. At least they were thinking of possibilities, that’s the first step. I was pleased to see some progress made during the Renaissance period. It seemed like the people were much smarter concluding that health problems are not spiritual but environmental. That was the first big step in my opinion in understanding community health. It was nice to see the government putting a foot forward in dealing with the health problems across the country. I feel that they did a good job and made many people realize that health is important. With all the advancements most people can remain pretty healthy. Some people choose not to by choosing bad lifestyles. Many people are suffering from obesity, drug use, large consumptions of alcohol, and its sad to see people hurting their own bodies when in reality its not to hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle barring certain conditions that are not controllable. It is very pleasing to see Community Health on the rise and people are putting in a real effort to remain fit and healthy!