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Yi-Tang Lin presents the historical process by which statistics became the language of global health. Using the case study of China and Taiwan in the period 1917-1960, Yi-Tang Lin examines the efforts by universities, foundations and health organizations to turn numbers into an international language for public health policy.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The call for a language of public health: Philanthropic foundations, bacteriologists, and health administrators; 2. The language and dialect of health science: Public health schools and their statistical practices; 3. The language of health administrations: The League of Nations Epidemiological Intelligence Service; 4. The language of policy-making: Research and advocacy through health demonstrations; 5. Popularization at a global scale: The WHO and the postwar health statistics reporting system; 6. The art of rhetoric: Statistical standards at work, from fieldwork to world policy-making; 7. Another way of speaking? Public health statistics in the People's Republic of China; Conclusion: Numbers, experts, and policy-making.
About the author
Yi-Tang Lin is a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies for 2021–22.
Summary
Yi-Tang Lin presents the historical process by which statistics became the language of global health. Using the case study of China and Taiwan in the period 1917-1960, Yi-Tang Lin examines the efforts by universities, foundations and health organizations to turn numbers into an international language for public health policy.
Foreword
Presents the historical process by which statistics became the language for health institutions working in China, Taiwan, and the World.
