Cultivating Health: Los Angeles Women and Public Health Reform (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine)

At the dawn of the Progressive Era, when America was experiencing an industrial boom, many working families often ate contaminated food, lived in decaying urban tenements, and had little access to medical care. In a city that demanded change, Los Angeles women, rather than city officials, championed the call to action. Cultivating Health, an interdisciplinary chronicle, details women's impact on remaking health policy, despite the absence of government support. Combining primary source and municipal archival research with comfortable prose, Jennifer Lisa Koslow explores community nursing, housing reform, milk sanitation, childbirth, and the campaign against venereal disease in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Los Angeles. She demonstrates how women implemented health care reform and civic programs while laying the groundwork for a successful transition of responsibility back to government. Koslow highlights women's home health care and urban policy-changing accomplishments and pays tribute to what would become the model for similar service-based systems in other American centers. "Cultivating Health, an interdisciplinary chronicle, details the impact women had on remaking health policy in Progressive-era Los Angeles, despite the absence of government support. In a city that demanded change, women rather than city officials championed the call to action." "Combining primary source and municipal archival research with comfortable prose, Jennifer Lisa Koslow explores community nursing, housing reform, milk sanitation, childbirth, and the campaign against venereal disease in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Los Angeles. She demonstrates how women implemented health care reform and civic programs while laying the groundwork for a successful transition of responsibility back to government."--Jacket At the dawn of the Progressive Era, when America was experiencing an industrial boom, many working families often ate contaminated food and had little access to medical care. In a city that demanded change, Los Angeles women, rather than city officials, championed the call to action. This book details women's impact on remaking health policy. Paid for by the public purse : public health nursing Public authority for a private program : housing reform Bovines, babies, and bacteriology : the problems of crafting milk reform Delivering the city's children: midwives and municipal maternity programs The challenge of constructing venereal disease programs.