Article ID: CBB003140245

The Gospel of Wealth and the National Health: The Rockefeller Foundation and Social Medicine in Britain's NHS, 1945–60 (2020)

unapi

This article examines the Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) engagement with the British National Health Service (NHS) between 1945 and 1960. It argues that the organization morally invested in the success of the NHS because, to them, it offered a world-inspiring model for how to provide medical care following the tenets of social medicine. The RF administratively and financially supported two health centers, in Edinburgh and Manchester, to help realize these ambitions. While the development of both centers exposed conflicting understandings of social medicine, these facilities later became important examples when British health centers expanded in number after the mid-1960s. The article also considers how the shift toward more communal forms of general practice provoked unease regarding privacy among patients. However, strategies used by medical professionals to offset these anxieties helped facilitate public acceptance of forms of care that aligned with the communitarian values of social democracy. The connections between American private philanthropy and British state planning show how a routine visit to the doctor in Edinburgh or Manchester in the 1950s was implicated in the broader politics of postwar global health.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB003140245/

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Authors & Contributors
Stewart, John
Gorsky, Martin
Clark, Peder
Draper, Melvyn Lloyd
Welch, Ellen
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds
Concepts
Public health
Medicine
Medicine and society
Health care
Medicine and government
Medicine and politics
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Great Britain
Wales
England
Manchester (England)
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Sri Lanka
Institutions
National Health Service (Great Britain)
Rockefeller Foundation
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