A Life in Public Health An Insider's Retrospective [Hardcover]

From his time as a Truman appointee on the Health Needs of the Nation to his tenure as Dean of UCLA's School of Public Health, Dr. Lester Breslow has been a force behind the most important public health developments of the last century. With his trademark humor and conviction, Breslow recounts his participation in the field's ground swell from the study of communicable disease to the current control of chronic illnesses. He reveals the story behind his Human Population Laboratory's seven healthy habits (sleep right, eat right, don't smoke, don't drink too much, exercise, keep your weight down, eat breakfast) that Americans now know as doctrine.

Breslow tells what it took to garner the Surgeon General's cigarette warning, the current high tax on tobacco sales, and today's air pollution emission standards. He shows how a sometimes reticent medical establishment has come to understand that living conditions and behaviors are more important to longevity than the treatment of disease itself. This behind-the-scenes expose is fascinating reading for medical and public health students, educators, and policy makers alike.

Lester Breslow has long had the respect of his colleagues for his tenacious approach to chronic diseases long before it was fashionable in public health, for his ability to study human populations with the imagination that a bench scientist might use in studying microorganisms and for the careful way he has measured, documented, analyzed, simplified and then presented complex results in an understandable way???While California has been a consistent focus of his public health activities, his professional involvement and influence have been national and global. He has enriched the field by his work, the health of people in the aggregate by his findings, and now the lives of his admirers by sharing his story.
-Bill Foege In his account of his life in public health--at the local level, in Minnesota in the U.S. Army during World War II; at tl3=