(Forthcoming Paper on) "The War Against Disease" and the Plasticity of Public Health's "Ecology of Ideas"

I was very pleased to learn this morning that I my latest journal submission, a Perspectives article, has been accepted for publication in the The Journals of Gerontology. Series A, Biological Sciences.  

This journal is one of a few published by the The Gerontological Society of America. And it is a pleasure to have my work published in this journal again, which, in my personal experience, has always shown itself to be run very professionally- highly efficient and always provides expert feedback from both referees and Associate Editors throughout the review and revision processes.  Each time my submissions  have been significantly improved as a result of the insightful feedback I received during the review process. 

Here is the abstract of the paper:

In his 1910 JAMA Address the physician and pathologist Christian Herter (1865-1910) emphasized the importance of plasticity in science.  Herter’s insight is significant for understanding how public health’s “ecology of ideas” must evolve and change as the health challenges facing populations alters through the different stages of “epidemiologic transition” (Omran 1971).  The foundational moral aspiration (i.e. disease control) and intellectual suppositions (e.g. that public health is “purchasable”) of the early twentieth century public health pioneers C-E.A Winslow (1877-1957) and his mentor Hermann Biggs (1859-1923) were shaped by sanitation science and were deployed to mitigate the risks of early-life mortality.  But to meet the health challenges of today’s ageing world, public health’s “ecology of ideas” must be plastic, and thus open to revision and refinement in terms of both its foundational moral aspirations and the intellectual suppositions concerning how to best improve population health.  More medical research is needed in rate (of ageing) control vs disease control (Comfort 1969). 

Cheers, 

Colin