Vol.#2 -- 3
"New Federalism and Public Health"
Keynote Address to the 18th Annual Conference of the New England Public Health
Association
Wychmere Harbor, Cape Cod
June 3, 1982
This is the kind of speech that is expected by way of information and challenge from the leader of the Public Health Service to the public health folks who work in the trenches. This was probably a calculated risk on the part of the New England Public Health Association because the American Public Health Association had, without proper background, without any scholarship, often attacked me with mean spirit about my lack of preparation for a position in public health which was a smoke screen for the leadership's opposition to my anti-abortion position. They eventually awarded me their
highest honor, and had a prolonged emotional reception of the mea culpa variety after which, their relationship was what it should have been for the years that preceded it. No one knows how much was missed by this alienation, which although apologized for, could not make up for lost time. I naturally enjoyed the opportunity to talk to other societies of public health to make my position and goals known.
This lecture is as good a summary as I ever presented at the beginning of the Reagan Administration that included not only affects of inflation, on where we were as a country then, but what the future held as well.
Behavioral causes of death
Block Grants
Disease Prevention
Health promotion
Infant mortality
Inflation
Lifestyle
New Federalism
Spiraling costs of health care
"Healthy People"