A scanned frame of film, with sprocket holes, shows a soldier in a helmet looking at an American flag.
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The Public Health Film Goes to War

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By Michael Sappol, PhD

Public health and war have long been close companions. In the first terrible round of “modern wars”—the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War and World War I—military officials and civilian leaders called on health professionals and volunteers to help mobilize and protect military forces and civilian populations. Health experts in turn viewed these conflicts as a sort of laboratory to test and implement their theories, and an opportunity to use fresh knowledge and nascent technologies. They boarded the bandwagon to advance their professional, scientific, political, and ideological goals—and film was a medium with which to do so.

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Air Pollution Is a Human Problem: Mary Catterall’s Campaign for Clean Air in Leeds, England

By Angela Saward, BA, MTA, Wellcome Collection

Dr. Mary Catterall (1922-2015), doctor and sculptor, script and medical adviser to the film, It Takes Your Breath Away, became concerned with lung health when she was appointed Senior Registrar in Respiratory Medicine at Leeds General Infirmary, England in 1960. The film won a Silver Medal at the British Medical Association annual film competition in 1964.

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Brown smoke comes out of tall pipes from an industrial area behind a brick building in a grassy landscape.
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Darkening Day: Air Pollution Films and Environmental Awareness, 1960–1972

By Jennifer Lynn Peterson, PhD

The 1960s represent a turning point in popular awareness about environmental problems. The modern environmental movement that emerged in the mid-1960s and early ‘70s focused on a new set of concerns such as air pollution, water pollution, and pesticides. More federal environmental bills were signed in the 1960s and early 1970s than at any other period in U.S. history.

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A close up of a woman's face in a surgical mask.
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Screening the Nurse: Film, Fear, and Narrative from the 1940s to the 1970s

By David Cantor, PhD

In the early twentieth century, American nursing leaders came to see the motion picture as a quintessentially modern instrument of education, training, and recruitment. In their view, movies were a powerful tool to transform public opinion, to instruct new recruits in the mysteries of nursing practice, and to keep the qualified nurse abreast of new developments in the field.

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A film still of a framed poster that says "Know for Sure-get a blood test for syphilis."
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VD at the Movies: Public Health Service World War II Venereal Disease Films

By John Parascandola, PhD

The United States Public Health Service (PHS) released several education films in the 1930s and 1940s as part of a broader campaign against venereal-disease (VD). The agency had been operating a VD program since World War I, when concern over the number of Army recruits infected led Congress to enact a law that created a Venereal Disease Division in the PHS.

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