The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

February, 1951The Health Bulletina water supply that is both safe andsuitable for your use.The information presented in thisdiscussion, which is designed to emphasizeone of the many services PublicHealth renders, was obtained from Mr.Earle C. Hubbard, Principal SanitaryEngineer, in the Sanitary EngineeringDivision of the State Board of Health,whose duties involve supervising the designand operation of public water andsewerage systems, and advising municipaland institutional oflBcials and theirengineers regarding the type of facilitiesand water works materials neededto provide safe and adequate supplies.Approved Plants SafeIn conclusion, Mr. Hubbard statedthat water from all approved publicsupplies in North Carolina may be consumedwith a feeling cf uerfect safety,because of the long -icUxS and hardwork of those public officials whose dutyit is to see that water offered for publicconsumption is safe. So, turn on yourspigot and have a drink to the healthof those who look after your water supplyand do not forget to let them knowthat their efforts are appreciated.This article is designed to give informationon what your State Board ofHealth is doing to protect you and yovursagainst those illnesses which are preventableand the conditions which bringthem about. If you should ask yourfamily physician to name the waterbornediseases to which you would besubject without a safe and pure watersupply, his answer would include manywhich now occur only in rare instances,because of the fact that we have madesuch advances in the science of sanitation.The responsibility involved in theprotection of your drinking water isonly one of many which fall upon theshoulders of the Sanitary EngineeringDivision. This Division not only supervisespublic water supplies as to theirsanitation, but also is concerned withenvironmental sanitation, the inspectionof public eating places, milk, beddingand shellfish. It also has sectionswhich are concerned with insect androdent control. Many of the servicesperformed by this Division of the StateBoard of Health are so routine thatthey are taken for granted. While thepersonnel of this Division is non-medical,in the generally accepted term, theywork under the direction of the medicalmind, even as all other enlisted inthe service of Public Health.TODAY'S COMMUNITY CONCEPT OFSCHOOL HEALTH*Davh) Van deb Slice, M.D.,** Coordinator of Health ServicesOakland Public SchoolsGreat strides have been made inschool health in the relatively shortperiod since 1894, when the first schoolhealth program in the United Stateswas established in Boston. In those dayspublic schools were "hotbeds" of contagion,"and it was not uncommon forschool doctors to find children withdiphtheria, whooping cough or scarletfever in the classroom. The positionthat health occupies in the schools todayis the result of an evolutionary processwhich can be roughly divided intofive stages:Stage I was characterized by an effortto detect and exclude those pupilswho, because of communicable disease,threatened the welfare of others.In Stage II there was added the responsibilityof finding pupils with physi-•Reprinted with permission from California'sHealth.••Prior to his appointment by the OaklandPublic Schools in August, 1950, DoctorVan der Slice served for two and one-halfyears as School Health Consultant for theCalifornia State Department of PublicHealth. This article was prepared duringthat period.