Cultivating Health: Los Angeles Women and Public Health Reform

At the dawn of the Progressive Era, when America was experiencing an industrial boom, many working families often ate contaminated food, lived in decaying urban tenements, and had little access to medical care. In a city that demanded change, Los Angeles women, rather than city officials, championed the call to action.

Cultivating Health, an interdisciplinary chronicle, details women's impact on remaking health policy, despite the absence of government support. Combining primary source and municipal archival research with comfortable prose, Jennifer Lisa Koslow explores community nursing, housing reform, milk sanitation, childbirth, and the campaign against venereal disease in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Los Angeles. She demonstrates how women implemented health care reform and civic programs while laying the groundwork for a successful transition of responsibility back to government.

Koslow highlights women's home health care and urban policy-changing accomplishments and pays tribute to what would become the model for similar service-based systems in other American centers.

Author: Jennifer Lisa Koslow
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 08/01/2009
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780813545288

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2010
Scitech Book News 03/01/2010 pg. 69

About the Author
Jennifer Lisa Koslow is an assistant professor of history and director of the Historical Administration and Public History Program at Florida State University.