Changing Accents in Community Disease

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Abstract
Increasing aggregation of American population in cities and suburbs, a progressively more technical industry, development of ionizing radiation, and a mounting volume of mental and emotional illness are factors that make for a public health problem more diverse and complicated than in former years. Health activities of the day relate in this country primarily to chronic diseases of degenerative, metabolic, and neoplastic nature brought into prominence by an aging population and an improved control of infection. The mass diseases of current times are mainly man-made; their sources reside to a large extent in characteristics of host and in social environment. The approach to prevention and control is thereby altered. In some situations the individual can no longer depend on society to provide preventive measures, but must possess the knowledge to fend for himself. As a result, public health education acquires added significance. The primary emphasis in this wider use of educational method continues to be on substance and content of what is to be taught, and these in turn depend on identification of cause. This brings into play a common effort by epidemiologist and educator through principles of human ecology.

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