Professionalizing Public Health as a Branch of Medicine: The Emergence of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the United States in the 1910s

Abstract

After comparing the sanitary reform movement in England, France, and Germany, the paper discusses how bacteriological discovery in the 1880s was a turning point in dividing the interests of the ´old´ public health advocates pursuing social reforms from the ´new´ public health advocates pursuing scientific reforms. In the 1910s, the United States witnessed the dawning of a new era in public health and the rising concern for a national health program. The American pioneers of public health became to recognize the need for new kinds of public health professionals. In this period, the Rockefeller Foundation initiated the designing of a new model for a school of public health in the United States. Most leaders of public health arguably participated in drawing up the model for the school of public health. While William H Welch was inclined towards an ´Institute of Hygiene´ similar to that of Max von Pettenkoffer in Munich, Wickeliffe Rose insisted that the ´School of Public Health´ be established by all the state governments. The ´Welch-Rose Report,´ with a basic framework consisting of Welch´s ideas, provided a theoretical basis for the classic model of the school of public health. Abraham Flexner, who firmly believed in a biomedical model of public health, decidedly contributed to the Johns Hopkins, disregarding strong rivals such as Harvard and Columbia. The ´Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health´ was to become a medicalized version of public health. Finally, the paper raises an intriguing question: Should the schools of public health in Korea follow the Welch model or the Rose model? Is there another option?