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The article examines abstracts of papers submitted but not included in the program of the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Medical Care Section, 1962. Some of these are "Experiences and Activities at a Medical Computing Center," by L.D. Cady, M.A. Woodbury, and L.J. Tich and "An Internist's Experiences With Medical Care of Welfare Patients in Proprietary Nursing Homes," by Sidney M. Greenberg. The first abstract focuses on the center that is cooperating with investigators in the area of mathematical and theoretical analysis and statistical data handling and analysis, information coding, keypunching and storage of medical data for further study and retrieval. The second abstract contains observations of the medical, nursing, and administrative practices in four nursing homes as made by an internist responsible for the medical Scare of welfare patients in these homes. In evaluating these activities the recognition and meeting of the patient's total needs was utilized as the criterion of quality of performance.

The main purpose of this article is to draw special attention to ideas developed, questions raised, and opinions expressed by some working scholars invited to present research papers on teaching the social sciences in medical schools at the 1959 meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology held in Madison, Wisconsin. These research papers advance ideas about research and teaching that can add new dimensions to the management of conditions having obvious psychosocial components: alcoholism, hypertension, mental illness, chronic complaints of unclear etiology and so on. By training, and because of his recent advent to the medical area, the social scientist is uniquely qualified to seek to apply the "stress" theory of illness to these complaints. Another area of concern relates to social science in patient management. Nurses, social welfare workers and psychologists, as well as some medical sociologists, already participate in some aspects of patient management. There are many obstacles to the successful integration of social or behavioral science in the medical curriculum.

This paper examines the internal and external stresses which accompany the gradual shift of responsibility from local boards of health to a possible eventual domination by the state health department. Fifty seven members of boards of health in 14 communities in one county in Eastern Pennsylvania were interviewed on the present functions of the local boards of health. Our finding suggests that the local board of health is not simply an organization. It is symbolic of a way of life in a community and it represents many things-a part of town, individualism, self-rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the health insurance movement, the provision of drugs has been one of the medical needs least well met. One prepaid medical care plan has pioneered in an effort to meet this need, and its precise experience is reported in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]