50 Fun Facts About Public Health

John Snow traced the 1854 Soho cholera outbreak to a public water pump where?

His dot map of cases helped overturn the miasma theory; he also gave Queen Victoria chloroform in childbirth.

Which explanation of disease, blaming 'bad air', did John Snow's cholera work help discredit?

Officials replaced the pump handle after the outbreak faded and initially rejected his water-borne explanation.

Ignaz Semmelweis cut childbed fever deaths in 1847 by having doctors wash their hands in what?

Mortality on his ward fell from 18.3% to 1.2% within months, yet colleagues rejected him and he died in an asylum in 1865.

The 'Semmelweis reflex' describes what?

The term is a nod to the physicians who were offended by the suggestion that their hands were unclean.

In 1796 Jenner inoculated James Phipps with material from which disease to protect against smallpox?

The pus came from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes and a cow named Blossom; 'vaccine' derives from the Latin for cow.

In which year did the WHO certify smallpox eradicated, the only human disease ever wiped out?

The last natural case was Somali cook Ali Maow Maalin in 1977; the disease had killed around 300 million people in the 20th century.

Live smallpox virus is kept only at the CDC in Atlanta and a lab in which country?

The Vector Institute holds Russia's stock; any research needs WHO approval.

Which French scientist developed the first rabies vaccine, given to nine-year-old Joseph Meister in 1885?

He also disproved spontaneous generation with swan-neck flasks and gave his name to pasteurisation.

Robert Koch's postulates, formulated in 1884, are criteria for establishing what?

Koch himself relaxed the first postulate after finding healthy carriers of cholera and typhoid.

Which kind of chart, nicknamed the 'coxcomb', did Nightingale use to show Crimean War deaths?

In 1859 she became the first woman elected to the Royal Statistical Society; International Nurses Day falls on her birthday, 12 May.

'Typhoid Mary' Mallon, the first identified healthy carrier of typhoid in the US, worked in what job?

Investigator George Soper found she had cooked for eight families, seven of which had typhoid outbreaks; she spent 26 years quarantined on North Brother Island.

Why was the 1918 influenza pandemic nicknamed the 'Spanish flu'?

The first confirmed case was actually at Camp Funston, Kansas, in March 1918; the H1N1 virus infected about a third of the world.

Which 1918 event in Philadelphia became a notorious super-spreader, followed by about 12,000 deaths?

The pandemic was unusual for killing young adults; most deaths came from secondary bacterial pneumonia.

The Salk polio vaccine trial of 1954 enrolled about how many children, known as 'Polio Pioneers'?

Results announced on 12 April 1955 showed the injected vaccine worked; Sabin's oral sugar-cube version arrived in 1961.

Which charity's immunisation drive cut US polio cases from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 by 1957?

The last US cases from wild virus were among the Amish in 1979; global cases fell from 350,000 in 1988 to 33 in 2018.

Which US city began the first controlled water-fluoridation experiment on 25 January 1945?

The CDC later listed fluoridation among the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century; about 72% of Americans drink fluoridated water.

Which dentist spent thirty years studying the 'Colorado brown stain' that revealed fluoride's effect?

H. Trendley Dean of the NIH then led the epidemiological studies that set the stage for fluoridation.

The CDC was founded in 1946 primarily to fight which disease in the American South?

It succeeded the wartime Malaria Control in War Areas programme and bought its Atlanta land from Emory for a token $10.

Which Coca-Cola chairman helped the CDC acquire its Atlanta campus for a $10 token payment to Emory?

The agency's Epidemic Intelligence Service, its 'disease detectives', began in 1951.

The World Health Organization was founded on 7 April of which year, a date now marked as World Health Day?

Its headquarters are in Geneva and its first director-general was Canadian psychiatrist Brock Chisholm.

The 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration, which launched the 'Health for All by 2000' goal, focused on what?

The WHO-UNICEF conference was held in what is now Almaty, Kazakhstan; a 40th-anniversary meeting in Astana renewed the pledge in 2018.

On what date did the WHO declare COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern?

The pandemic declaration followed on 11 March; the emergency programme that handled it dated from the 2016 post-Ebola reforms.

The Framingham Heart Study, begun in 1948, is credited with coining which everyday medical term?

It began with 5,209 Massachusetts residents and showed smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure and obesity raise heart-disease risk.

The Tuskegee study, in which Black men were left with untreated syphilis, ran for how many years?

From 1932 to 1972; penicillin had been standard treatment since 1947, and the scandal led to the 1974 National Research Act and the Belmont Report.

Which whistleblower leaked the Tuskegee study to the Associated Press in 1972?

President Clinton formally apologised to the survivors in 1997.

Which US Surgeon General released the landmark 1964 report linking smoking to lung cancer?

It was released on a Saturday to soften the stock-market impact and led to warning labels in 1965 and a broadcast ad ban.

Why was the 1964 Surgeon General's smoking report deliberately released on a Saturday?

The committee reviewed more than 7,000 scientific articles and found smokers had 10 to 20 times the lung-cancer risk.

In epidemiology, what does R0 (the basic reproduction number) measure?

If R0 is above 1 an outbreak grows; measles has an R0 of about 12 to 18.

Roughly what share of a population must be immune to reach the herd immunity threshold for measles?

The threshold is 1 minus 1/R0, and measles is one of the most contagious diseases known.

Which research design follows disease-free people forward in time according to their exposure?

Case-control studies look backwards from diseased and healthy groups and report odds ratios; cohorts report relative risk.

The word 'epidemiology' comes from Greek roots meaning the study of what?

Hippocrates was the first known to link disease to environment and to distinguish endemic from epidemic illness.

Which US state was first to require seat-belt use, from 1 December 1984?

New Hampshire remains the only state with no adult seat-belt law; national use is around 90%.

Which US state is the only one without an adult seat-belt law?

Its belt use rate of about 68% is the nation's lowest; Georgia's 97% is the highest.

Oral rehydration therapy for cholera and diarrhoea combines water with sugar and what?

During the 1971 Bangladesh war, ORT cut cholera mortality in refugee camps to 3.6% against 30% on IV fluids.

Which 1906 novel about Chicago's meatpacking plants prompted the Pure Food and Drug Act?

Upton Sinclair said he had aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit it in the stomach.

Which agency grew out of the Bureau of Chemistry created by the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act?

President Theodore Roosevelt had dismissed Sinclair as a crackpot before sending inspectors to the stockyards.

Which pasteurisation pioneer's process heats liquids to between 60 and 100 °C to kill microbes?

He first applied it to wine and beer before it became standard for milk.

Which academic degree is the standard professional credential in the field?

Johns Hopkins opened one of the first schools of public health in 1916; the American Public Health Association dates from 1872.

The APHA's annual national awareness observance in the US falls during which part of the year?

The APHA organises it; the CDC credits public health measures with about 25 of the years added to US life expectancy in the 20th century.

Which of these was NOT on the CDC's list of ten great public health achievements of the 20th century?

The list also includes safer workplaces, control of infectious diseases, safer food, healthier mothers and babies, family planning and recognising tobacco as a hazard.

Whose 1920 definition calls public health 'the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life'?

Winslow was a Yale bacteriologist and the definition is still quoted in textbooks.

Which two scientists showed in the 1960s that cholera patients could absorb glucose, salt and water by mouth?

Robert Crane's discovery of sodium-glucose co-transport explained why the gut keeps absorbing during diarrhoea.

Which physician's swan-neck flask experiments disproved the idea of spontaneous generation?

Sealed sterilised flasks stayed clear while open ones grew microbes, showing germs came from outside; he founded the Pasteur Institute in 1887.

Roughly how many people did the 1918 influenza pandemic infect worldwide?

That was around a third of humanity; deaths are estimated at 17 to 50 million, possibly more.

Whose 1842 report on the sanitary condition of the labouring population led to England's 1848 Public Health Act?

The Act put water supply, sewerage, drainage and paving under a single local body, with a General Board of Health as central authority.

Which English city got the world's first integrated sewerage system, designed by James Newlands from 1848?

Joseph Bazalgette's better-known London system followed between 1858 and 1875.

Joseph Bazalgette's sewer network for central London was a response to which event of 1858?

The network proved instrumental in relieving the city of its cholera epidemics.

James Lind's 1754 work on scurvy led the Royal Navy to add what to long voyages?

Lind's finding was one of the earliest examples of a public health measure adopted by a national institution.

Which university's School of Hygiene and Public Health, founded in 1916, became the largest in the US?

Columbia and Harvard had founded schools on the same model by 1922, and by 1999 the US had twenty-nine schools of public health.

A $25,000 gift from which banana magnate founded Tulane's public health school in 1912?

Tulane's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine conferred its first doctor of public health degree in 1914.