PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Howard Markel

Publications and source records attributed to Howard Markel.

22 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Children's public health policy in the United States: how the past can inform the future.

As we struggle to respond to child public health problems in the twenty-first century, the past provides many core lessons. This paper explores three of them: the need to focus on the environment that makes children sick rather than on sick children; the need to attack the biggest problems, not the most scientifically interesting ones; and the need to provide services where children are most likely to be. To illuminate these lessons, we discuss important child public health efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The history of vaccines and immunization: familiar patterns, new challenges.

Human beings have benefited from vaccines for more than two centuries. Yet the pathway to effective vaccines has been neither neat nor direct. This paper explores the history of vaccines and immunization, beginning with Edward Jenner's creation of the world's first vaccine for smallpox in the 1790s. We then demonstrate that many of the issues salient in Jenner's era-such as the need for secure funding mechanisms, streamlined manufacturing and safety concerns, and deep-seated public fears of inoculating agents-have frequently reappeared and have often dominated vaccine policies. We suggest that historical awareness can help inform viable long-term solutions to contemporary problems with vaccine research, production, and supply.

History, 18th Century↗