HEALTH CONFERENCE IN MICHIGAN

July 20, 1912

Current Comment

A recent issue of Public Health —the bulletin of the Michigan State Department of Health—contains a report on the health officers' conference held at Ann Arbor, January 30-31. This annual conference of the local and state health officers has come to be an established custom in Michigan. Water-analysis, the need of a state hospital for advanced cases of tuberculosis, water-purification, certified milk, garbage-disposal, hotel-sanitation and occupational diseases were discussed before the conference. While it is important from a scientific standpoint, perhaps the greatest practical value of such a conference is that it brings together, and makes mutually acquainted all of the men in the state who are working directly on public health problems. Perhaps the most serious flaw in our public health work so far has been the lack of close cooperation and mutual understanding between the different detachments of the army that is carrying on this fight. Lack of organization and cooperation means duplication of work with waste of money and effort. Michigan and Kansas are striving to unite the health-workers of the states into a compact and effective body which will render more effective warfare against disease than can the isolated town and county health officers found in too many of our states.