Race, class, and health: school medical inspection and "healthy" children in British Columbia, 1890-1930

School medical inspection provides a window on the construction of "healthy" children in British Columbia over the turn of the 20th century. Public health reformers, doctors, teachers, and school nurses encouraged children and their parents to conform to a particular model of healthy living. This paper argues that this model, reflecting Anglo-Celtic, middle-class, and urban sensibilities, pathologized children and families unable or unwilling to conform to this powerful social ideal. Far form simply signaling the triumph of sanitary science, school medical inspection was a powerful means of legitimizing existing relations of power and confirming social boundaries.

Canadian health surveys, 1950 1997

This paper provides a brief history of Canadian health surveys and a review of health or health-related surveys from the first national household survey in 1950/51 to the present time. Surveys have evolved from collecting information on health care utilization, health status and some risk behaviours to a wider range of health determinants following the 1974 Lalonde report. In addition to the occasional cross-sectional surveys, there are periodic surveys, longitudinal surveys, school-based surveys and surveys based on subgroups in the population or specific topic areas. The survey review is presented in the following four tables: Table 1 summarizes national surveys including such information as the date(s) and frequency of data collection, topic areas, target population, sample size and response rate for each survey; Table 2 provides the same information for provincial surveys; both tables point to Table 3, which supplements the previous information with survey sponsors and contacts; Table 4 provides similar information for commercial surveys. This reference, which will be updated periodically, is intended to act as a source of information and support in the development of new surveys.