Before I had taken this class, I had a very limited understanding of what “public health” meant. What came to mind at hearing this term were ideas like healthcare, insurance and the qualities of hospitals. When I think of health, in general, my first thoughts center around physical health, and what it means to live with or around disease. I think of statistics, of maps, of populations and large groups of people.
What is striking to me, then, about readings like Root Shock and even the reading we had for last week, is that they focus intensely on the emotional aspect of public health as well as the individual aspect of public health. Dr. Fullilove presents her findings on a very personal level, regaling the reader with various tales of individuals she has encountered while doing her research and the way urban renewal has specifically affected their own lives. Her argument is centered around the concept that the emotional changes that come with losing one’s home within a community pose severe consequences to the quality of life that individual will face moving forward. While it may be obvious that a tragic outbreak of cholera in Victorian London because of unsanitary conditions is a major public health issue, I believe the displacement of communities, usually low income minorities, in twentieth century America is an issue not as many people recognize as being one of public health. I certainly did not.
“Kindness worked through the collective as both buffer and glue. It was a force for tolerance and respect…[But] in the aftermath of urban renewal, individuals were preoccupied with making a new life, and perhaps they could not be as kind as they had been previously.” This passage in the reading really struck me, and is an excellent example of the point I am trying to make. To focus on the level of kindness present within a community may sound like something very personal, a well as something trivial, in discussing the health of the residents of that community. But Dr. Fullilove focuses on it extensively, describing different people’s reactions to the decline of kindness in their renewed neighborhoods. What the reading for this week shows is that emotional health is just as pressing an issue as physical health, and individuals demand our attention so that we can learn from their personal stories and fix the problems of the collective. After all, isn’t it individuals who make up our statistics?
