The foundation of the National Health Service on 5 July 1948 was a momentous development in the history of the United Kingdom. Issues of health care touch the lives of everyone, and the NHS has come to be regarded as the cornerstone of the welfare state and as a model for state-organisedhealth care systems elsewhere. Yet throughout its history, the Service has existed in an atmosphere of crisis. Charles Webster's political history is an entirely new and original examination of the NHS from its inception through to its management under the first term of the current Labourgovernment, providing the necessary framewrork for assessing its future as we enter the new millennium.

"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

How good is the quality of health care in the United States? Is quality improving? Or is it suffering? While the average person on the street can follow the state of the economy with economic indicators, we do not have a tool that allows us to track trends in health care quality. Beginning in 2003, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will produce an annual report on the national trends in the quality of health care delivery in the United States. AHRQ commissioned the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to help develop a vision for this report that will allow national and state policy makers, providers, consumers, and the public at large to track trends in health care quality. Envisioning the National Health Care Quality Report offers a framework for health care quality, specific examples of the types of measures that should be included in the report, suggestions on the criteria for selecting measures, as well as advice on reaching the intended audiences. Its recommendations could help the national health care quality report to become a mainstay of our nation's effort to improve health care.

An analysis of the transition from universal, publicly funded health care to New Labour s application of market principles: a national institution reaching crisis point and a key lesson for those concerned with health care everywhere.