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THE 1930S POSTER IMAGE contrasts a modernist public housing development with conditions in a tenement district. In the latter, a woman pushes a baby carriage through a neighborhood that at the time would have been considered unhealthy.1 She approaches overflowing garbage cans; laundry lines fill the tall, narrow space between tenement buildings; and an old water tank tops a roof. An elevated train can be seen in the distance. The image, in gray-blue and gold, is crossed out. Eliminating these types of neighborhoods as a means to promote health has been a goal of housing and health advocates since the time of Thomas Southwood Smith and Edwin Chadwick in the 19th century.2 The modernist housing development, rendered in four colors, sits on a superblock with no through traffic; each building has ample access to sunlight and green space but not to streets. Long, narrow buildings, designed to maximize ventilation, contain many corner units. Residents would have views of nature and plenty of opportunities for outdoor recreation. The poster's text reads: “BETTER HOUSING: THE SOLUTION TO INFANT MORTALITY IN THE SLUMS.” This poster was produced by the federal Works Progress Administration–Federal Art Project sometime between 1936 and 1938. During its years of existence between 1935 and 1943, more than 2 000 000 copies of approximately 35 000 distinct posters were produced, but fewer than 2000 have survived.3 At least a half dozen of these involved housing and health themes. Some promoted overall public housing goals of clean, safe living; others celebrated the opening of individual developments. In addition, some posters were dedicated to other health-related topics, including syphilis, workplace injuries, tuberculosis, and hand washing. Overall, the Works Progress Administration program produced posters dedicated to everything from travel and tourism to book readings and war bonds.4 Many of the posters had designs similar to the one pictured here with simple graphics; clean, bold lettering; and socially oriented messages.5 Better housing: the solution to infant mortality in the slums, one of a series of posters promoting health through new forms of housing, 1930s. The idea for this publicly funded program to support unemployed artists began in New York City as an initiative by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia; in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal took over the program and expanded it across the United States. The New York poster program was administered by Richard Floethe, an artist who had trained at the influential Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany. He illustrated many popular children's books before and after his work in the program. The artist who designed the poster was Anthony Velonis, a master printmaker who helped elevate the process of silk screening to an art form he called serigraphy.6 Velonis eventually cofounded a printing firm that would produce work for many famous artists in the decades after World War II. The poster program operated by accepting requests from public and nonprofit agencies for a poster on a specific topic.7 Floethe would post the topic request along with some parameters for the project, and individual artists on staff in the department would submit designs. A winning design was then produced for the client.8 This poster was produced for the New York City Housing Authority, which may have intended to use it to promote its plans for slum clearance and public housing construction. It was a unique time in the history of health and housing; an early phase of the New Deal had produced about 35 000 units of public housing, many modeled on European models of new architecture, and Congress was about to pass the 1937 Wagner-Steagall Act, which would dramatically expand the program to eventually produce almost 1.2 million units.9,10 The new housing development in the poster reflects the values of modern architects who believed that the incorporation of strong design elements would achieve important social and health goals.11,12 These modernist ideals would dominate public housing architecture for decades despite a growing disillusionment with the social effects of these designs that began in the 1950s.13 Some of the health assumptions that underlie the poster, including the superblock as a preferred way to provide access to open space and reduce traffic conflicts, would not be totally challenged until the growth of the built environment and health movement in the 1990s.14 By the beginning of the 2000s, a new consensus as to what constituted a healthy neighborhood—one that features fine-grained development, mixed uses, street connectivity, and other features that promote walking, healthy eating, and social capital—would emerge.15,16

The article profiles Zimbabwe musician Oliver Mtukudzi who appeared on a 2008 Population Services International calendar that promoted HIV/AIDS testing among couples and was distributed by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Health and Child Welfare. The popular musician's commitment to preventing the spread of these diseases and his songs "Stay With One Woman" and "Todii" or "What Shall We Do?" which were used in public health campaigns are noted. The prevalence of HIV in Zimbabwe in 2001, which was 26 percent, declined in 2007 to 15.3 percent.

The article focuses on Chinese health posters, specifically an anti-malaria poster from the 1960s. The poster's visual characteristics reflect the social and political context of the time. The posters teach the interrelation between health and happiness and define malaria and the best way to eradicate the disease. The poster depicts community cooperation in the elimination of mosquito breeding grounds. The six parts of the poster summarize the Chinese health campaign which had great success in reducing the incidence of malaria.

THIS COLORFUL CHINESE public health poster tells patients with tuberculosis (TB) to get treatment to recover their health and their productivity. The writing on the wall says: “Rest Well and Recover so as to Go Back to Work Early.” During the 1950s, as China embarked on the first Five-Year Plan to build a new socialist economy, health policy emphasized that as industrial production developed, factories would provide labor insurance and labor protection, government employees would have free medical care, and health facilities would be strengthened to protect people's health in the cities and the countryside.1 Health authorities were very concerned about widespread diseases and the associated loss of economic productivity. Health posters were an important educational tool in China's public health campaigns from 1950 through 1980. Anti-TB posters encouraged people to have x-rays, take TB vaccines, and not to spit on the ground; the posters also prodded individuals to embrace good nutrition and regular exercise, and to get enough sleep to boost general health and build a strong immune system. TB declined significantly as a result of work units’ active participation in the health campaigns and the availability of universal free health care. Today, TB has resurfaced as a public health threat. The World Health Organization estimates that, globally, more than 2 billion people (a third of the world's population) are infected with TB bacilli; China alone has 4.5 million known cases, second only to India. About 160 000 Chinese persons lost their lives to TB in 2008.2 This Chinese anti-TB poster from the early 1950s reads, “The purpose of treating tuberculosis is to gain recovery and also productivity; strive to make the patient become a physically and mentally healthy productive person.” Source. Prints and Photographs Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. TB–and alarmingly, the prevalence of multidrug-resistant TB–is spreading across urban and rural regions in China. This drains China's health budget and reduces overall economic productivity, as China's rapid economic growth depends on the manpower of migrant laborers-workers who are highly vulnerable because they are usually poor and do not have access to subsidized medical service while away from home. Today in China, more emphasis is given to curative methods and less to the active involvement of workers to improve their own health. Perhaps, to more effectively combat TB, workers' active participation in health promotion and protection again should be emphasized as much as treatment.

The article discusses the United Nations (UN) and its vision for global public health, noting its World Health Organization (WHO), and a poster reproduced from the year 2000 regarding health disparities among the poor. The preamble to the UN's Charter is quoted in part. The UN has grown from the 51 nations that helped found it in 1945 to comprise 192 member states.

The article discusses the public health campaign in China to eradicate malaria and the use of health posters depicting prevention, the cornerstone of the public health policy of China from the 1950s throughout the 1970s. The author reports that malaria was controlled by 1990, although not completely eradicated.