Brittany Arnold
Merit 1
Compare historical and current features of public health.
There are many similarities differences between historical and current public health.
One of my examples is housing. Housing was a major problem in the past as most houses were overcrowded, which was seen as normal. Although, it still occurs now but very rare compared to the past. Sanitation wasn’t regulated and cleanliness wasn’t a high priority, whereas now people have set standards of how to be clean and help to regulate the service of cleanliness. An additional major problem was that the water supply that we had was not clean at all and they didn’t have access to water in every house. On the other hand, now we have a clean supply of water in every household in England which comes from a clean and healthy source. Another problem was that all the sewage was not disposed of correctly which caused a lot of major problems, whereas now we have a routine of recycling which are weekly bin collections and we have a complete sewage system.
Another example is education. In the past, education was not very advanced and not many people had the knowledge to read and write. This caused major problems as people couldn’t understand why they were taking medication and the problems associated with it. This was because of the lack of education back then, quarantine was highly relied upon and therefore people were not allowed out whilst they were ill. On the other hand, today quarantine is only used in extreme cases of diseases that are highly contagious and almost everyone can read and understand.
Another example is life expectancy. Today, a man’s life expectancy is 79.5 years old and women 82.5 years old. On the other hand, 100 years ago, the average life expectancy for men was 40 years old and women 42 years old. This has changed dramatically in the last 100 years as education and knowledge has got better and also medication has developed a lot over the years. People live healthier lifestyles and have a better diet. Change4life was also founded in 2009 which had a great impact on everybody’s health and well-being. It promotes a healthy life style and how to have a balanced diet. On the other hand, unfortunately, obesity is a big issue in the UK today and we have a high rate of people who are obese. Back then, obesity wasn’t a major problem, this was because people were more physical and active when it came to getting from places as they didn’t have cars and public transport, most of their travelling would be achieved by walking. This would have a great impact on people today as some people have to travel miles to get to work or college.

A final example is health related and this covers things like contraception, vaccines, medication, treatment and knowledge. In the past, knowledge wasn’t the greatest aspect for people back then so they didn’t have much treatment so people would live a shorter life. There weren’t many medications and treatments back then and people couldn’t afford to medicate themselves and vaccinations weren’t freely available like they are now and the common diseases like polio and STI’S are covered and people have a lot of knowledge to treat the diseases. Also, when people who were carrying a baby which was unwanted, they couldn’t do anything about it as abortions weren’t as easy to go to like they are now. People would go to the back streets and let an unqualified man try to perform an abortion on them which could result to them being very ill and probably death. Contraception wasn’t around and as easy to access like now. Contraception is freely available and there are rules and procedures in place to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STI’S and STD’s.

Sanitation back in the 19th century was very poor. There was an unprecedented scale of migration from rural to urban locations, leaving urban settlers with poor housing options and standards of public health. This led to high incidences of killer diseases such as cholera and high