Joseph Walter Mountin

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Standing. 2nd from left: Joseph W. Mountin - 2nd from right: Henry E. Sigerist . Sitting. Left to right: John HL Cumpston , John A. Ryle , Weldon Dalrymple-Champneys and Janet Vaughan . --- In front of a clinic in Lahore in 1944.

Joseph Walter Mountin (born October 13, 1891 in Hartford , Wisconsin , † April 26, 1952 in Washington, DC ) was an American doctor in the public health sector .

Live and act

Mountin was born into a medium-sized farming family as one of seven children. In 1895, four-year-old Joseph and his five-year-old brother Ned fell ill with diphtheria. Ned died and Joseph survived. At Marquette University he received the title of Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1914 and in 1916 the title of Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.).

He received his clinical training at the “ Milwaukee County Hospital ” and at the “Chicago Lying-In Hospital” before he was employed as a research assistant at the “ United States Public Health Service ” from August 1917 . He was entrusted with the sanitation of the vicinity of temporary military camps that were set up in Louisville , Des Moines and Waco during the First World War . In July 1918 he was appointed "assistant surgeon". He received training in quarantine organization , naval hospitals, and healthcare administration. From 1921 to 1926 he was employed in the Tri-State Sanitary District of Joplin and organized the health service in the state of Missouri . Among other things, he developed programs for the control of malaria, trachoma and tuberculosis.

Great Depression

Herbert Hoover

After the 1929 Depression , President Hoover pushed for an improvement in production efficiency in order to solve the economic problems. That also applied to health care. The annual meeting of the American Public Health Association of 1932 had the motto: "Maintaining Health Efficiency in Times of Distress." ("Maintaining the efficiency of the health system in times of need.")

Franklin D. Roosevelt - New Deal

Under the term of the New Deal , the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) also set new accents for the American health care system. Laws have been passed to reduce the worst shortcomings and to meet the needs of the population. In healthcare, this movement has been associated with three main names:

From 1933 to 1934 Mountin was sent to Washington as head of a “Department for the Study of Public Health Services” (“Office of Studies of Public Health Methods”) set up by the United States Public Health Service . In October 1934 he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to carry out random checks in the individual areas to find out which medical services individual families had received. The results of this investigation method were later called process quality . As part of the New Deal, more attention has been paid to health care in the healthcare sector. Mountin wrote in a report in July 1934:

“To date, the health departments have mainly dealt with disease prevention. This approach primarily involves education and prescription. Today it is recognized that contraceptive and treatment measures must be closely linked and that every scientific advance requires more administrative staff. "

From 1938 to 1941, Mountin published 12 reports analyzing hospital structures from across the country. These reports served as the basis for the Hospital and Health Center Construction Act , also known as the Hill – Burton Act , initiated under President Roosevelt's New Deal and passed in 1946 .

Indian Bhore Committee

In the autumn of 1944, Mountin was invited by the Indian colonial government to tour the country with a group of foreign doctors and to analyze the structures of the local health system. This analysis served the Indian «Bhore Committee», which was founded in 1943 by Sir Joseph William Bhore (1878–1960), as an argumentation aid for a report completed in 1946 with recommendations for the development of a structured health system in India. In contrast to Henry E. Sigerist , who also belonged to the group of foreign doctors , Mountin was of the opinion that Indian industrial workers should not be insured against illness through an insurance that had to be established, but, like Indian farmers, should be cared for directly by the medical services of the state . Sigerist argued that the establishment of insurance for the still small number of Indian industrial workers could be organized more quickly than the establishment of state care, and that industrial workers would benefit from medical care more quickly.

Framingham Heart Study

In 1947, Mountin initiated the Framingham Heart Study .

Works (selection)

  • Preventive Medicine in Private Practice . 1925
  • United States. & JW Mountin. Study of public health service . Seattle, Washington. Washington 1932
  • Modern trends in Public Health Administration County Health Work . 1934
  • JW Mountin, EH Pennell, EE Flook & United States. Experience of the health department in 811 counties, 1908-34 . Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. 1936
  • JW Mountin, JG Townsend & United States. Observations on Indian health problems and facilities . Washington, DC: USGPO 1936
  • JW Mountin, EH Pennell, EE Flook & United States. Illness and medical care in Puerto Rico . United States Government Printing Office. Washington DC 1937
  • JW Mountin, AJ Borowski, H. O'Hara & United States. Variations in the form and services of public health organizations. 1938
  • JW Mountin, EK Hankla, GB Druzina & United States. Ten years of federal grants-in aid for public health, 1936-1946 . Federal Security Agency, Public Health Service, Washington DC 1948
  • Together with Elliot H. Pennell and Anne G. Berger. Health service areas. Estimates of Future Physician Requirements . US Government Printing Office, Washington 1949 (digitized)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Military rank in the Navy
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Milton I. Roemer. Joseph W. Mountin, architect of modern public health . In: Public Health Reports, Volume 108 (1993), No. 6, p. 729
  3. ^ In the original: "Up to the present time, health departments have been concerned primarily with the prevention of disease. Education and regulation are the principal instruments used in this approach. It is now being recognized that preventive and curative measures are closely related and that each scientific advance necessitates a larger amount of personal service in administrative practice. "
  4. ↑ Henry E. Sigerist. The Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine during the academic year 1944-1945. … III Field Work in Canada and India. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Volume 18 (1945), p. 231
  5. ↑ Henry E. Sigerist. Report on India . In: Milton I. Roemer (editor). Henry E. Sigerist on the Sociology of Medicine. MD Publications Inc., New York 1960, pp. 288-296. Here: p. 294
personal data
SURNAME Mountin, Joseph Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American public health doctor
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Hartford , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1952
Place of death Washington, DC