Health Related Services (1958)

T HE FACT that health-related services is a topic at this symposium is tangible evidence that among those concerned with health there is recognition of the fundamental kinship of health services and those services more commonly regarded as social or economic in purpose. This is a long step forward toward the time when the health and welfare of a human being and of the public of which he is an integral part will be literally indivisible. This is not to deny that there are sicknesses of the body and mind that arise from physical causes accidental to or inherent in the environment. To trace and correct these causes is the traditional concern of public health personnel. However, sicknesses arising from social situations created by an uncongenial environment are more prevalent than ever before and have little direct relationship to the traditional focus of public health service. If we endorse the premise that the community's level of health can only be accurately measured by rating the level of health of each of its members, then the correction of socially induced illnesses becomes a logical matter for the attention of those developing or administering public health programs. If this premise is sound, the real questions are how and through whom these economically and socially induced illnesses can be discovered and corrected. Since the basic unit of our work is the human being, the general current thinking (but not current practice) suggests that treatment of the whole man is essential to the attainment of desired results or their nearest approximation, according to the means at our command. It is perhaps trite to comment that the complexity of organized society, and the rapidity by which that complexity is constantly being compounded, is often at the root of the individual's difficulties. It is even more trite to point out that well-directed and well-balanced teamwork is required if the interrelationship of these services and interests is to be demonstrated. The team which comes into existence through our accepting the concept of a close relationship between social and health services consists of health and socioeconomically trained personnel, and, incidentally, the individual and his family. The task of the professional members of that team is to bring together as best they can the skills of the participants whose specialties have been splintered from the originally comprehensive and central core of treatment. With the growing number of specialties in health and health-related fields, it is no longer possible for one person to be equally well versed in all of them. But it is possible to be aware of the potential that resides in their combination for preventive and better patient care and for public health. Without merging skills, the potential is obscured or lost. In our day, it is the chronic or long-term illness or invalidism induced by such illness, with its health, social, and economic ramifications, that professional medical personnel are called upon to diagnose, understand, and treat. This nay call for further specialization, but, if Miss Randall is a consultant on services for the aging for the Community Service Society of New York., and vice chairman, National Committee on the Aging, National Social Welfare Assembly.