Social change and health in Sweden - 250 years of politics and practice
Jan Sundin and Sam Willner
Swedish National Institute of Public Health, 2008
Contents
1. 250 years of public health
Health transition after 1750
Aims, concepts and perspectives
2. Pre-Enlightenment: Life and death in God's hand
3. Mercantilism, the Enlightenment and the birth of epidemiology
4. Society in transition: Population growth, proletarianisation and increased life expectancy (c. 1800-1870)
5. Industrialisation and hygienism (c. 1870-1920)
6. Between two wars: Towards the Swedish welfare state (1920-1945)
The epidemiological regime
Social and regional differences
The institutionalisation of maternal and child healthcare
District nurses in the line of public health duty
The fight against tuberculosis
The Bratt system - solidarity among decent folk
Solving societal problems with the help of "social medicine"
Social utopia: Scientific faith and paternalism
From urban to rural health risks: "Dirty Sweden" goes rural
The birth of the welfare state
7. Harvest time for welfare policy and medical progress (1945-2006)
Epidemiological trends
Men and women
Social differences in health
Regional differences in mortality
Harvest time for the welfare state
Urbanisation, housing crisis and the "million-homes" programme
Biomedical progress
The health service in economic crisis
Occupational and environmental health risks
Swedish Public Health Institute
Epidemiology, risk factors and health
Restructuring the economy, social stress and health
Care of the body, the perfect body ideal and health as market commodities
Swedish public health in a global individualistic world
A comprehensive Swedish public health policy
Health - a field of compromise
8. Conclusions - lessons from the past
Social determinants and health - a Swedish example
Health and the response of society
Health and social change
Sweden and its European neighbours - converging systems
Swedish history and the world today
Health and lessons from history
Reference list
Appendix