Failing to Professionalise, Struggling to Specialise: The Rise and Fall of Health Promotion as a Putative Specialism in England, 1980--2000 (2013)
Duncan, Peter (Author)
Medical History
Volume: 57
Pages: 377--396
Publication date: 2013
Language: English
Significant attention has been paid to the history of public health in England during the final part of the twentieth century. Within this, however, the field that came to be known as specialist health promotion (SHP) has been relatively neglected. Between 1980 and 2000 those working in this field, generally known as health promotion specialists (HPSs), enjoyed a relative rise in policy and practice prominence before SHP was effectively abandoned by government and others charged with developing and sustaining public-health structures. This paper seeks to explain why the fall of SHP is important; to move towards explaining its rise and decline; and to argue for greater historical attention to be paid to an important but neglected field within health and health care. Essentially, SHP emerged from a set of loose and contingent practices known as health education. A range of important social, economic, organisational and political influences contributed to the slow construction of a putative specialism in health promotion, accompanied by the desire on the part of some (but not all) HPSs to `professionalise' their role. Finally the projects of both specialisation and professionalisation failed, again as a result of then prevailing organisational and political influences. The importance of such a failure in a so-called era of public health is discussed. In the light of this, the paper concludes by briefly setting out an agenda for further research related to the history of SHP.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Ueyama, Takahiro;
(2010)
Health in the Marketplace: Professionalism, Theraputic Desires, and Medical Commodification in Late-Victorian London
Article
Reinhardt, Bob H.;
(2010)
The Global Great Society and the US Commitment to Smallpox Eradication
Article
Stein, Claudia;
Cooter, Roger;
(2011)
Visual Objects and Universal Meanings: AIDS Posters and the Politics of Globalisation and History
Article
Geissler, P. W.;
(2013)
Public Secrets in Public Health: Knowing Not to Know while Making Scientific Knowledge
Article
Loughlin, Kelly;
Berridge, Virginia;
(2008)
Whatever Happened to Health Education? Mapping the Grey Literature Collection Inherited by NICE
Article
Weisz, George;
(2002)
Regulating Specialties in France during the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Thesis
Grimsley-Smith, Melinda D.;
(2012)
Politics, Professionalization, and Poverty: Lunatic Asylums for the Poor in Ireland, 1817--1920
Article
Córdoba, Ernesto Aréchiga;
(2005)
Dictadura sanitaria, educación y propaganda higiénica en el México Revolucionario, 1917--1934
Book
Espinosa, Mariola;
(2009)
Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878--1930
Book
Maria Paola Zanoboni;
(2020)
La vita al tempo della peste. Misure restrittive, quarantena, crisi economica
Article
Christian Strother;
(2014)
“A Danger Which More or Less Threatens Us All”: Yellow fever and the politics of disease control in Senegal 1890–1914
Book
Claire L. Jones;
(2020)
The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870-1914
Thesis
Cruickshank, Paul Joseph;
(2011)
The Teleology of Care: Reinventing International Health, 1968--1989
Article
Palladino, Paolo;
(2001)
Discourses of Smoking, Health, and the Just Society: Yesterday, Today, and the Return of the Same?
Article
Stewart, John;
(2008)
The Political Economy of the British National Health Service, 1945--1975: Opportunities and Constraints?
Book
Cantor, David;
(2008)
Cancer in the Twentieth Century
Article
Welshman, John;
(2006)
Compulsion, Localism, and Pragmatism: The Micro-Politics of Tuberculosis Screening in the United Kingdom, 1950--1965
Article
Tobbell, Dominique A.;
(2009)
“Who's Winning the Human Race?” Cold War as Pharmaceutical Political Strategy
Article
Clancey, Gregory;
(2012)
Intelligent Island to Biopolis: Smart Minds, Sick Bodies and Millennial Turns in Singapore
Book
Fisher, Jill;
(2009)
Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials
Be the first to comment!