Table 1.
Quotes on the SDOH from past and present public health voices.
| On questioning power |
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| “Those who have been more endowed with the talent of health, wealth, and knowledge are but stewards, who must make use of their opportunities for the common good (Atherton, 1911).” |
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| Secretary, City Improvement League of Montreal |
| “[T]he other thing to always remember in this work is that public health or health promotion, to do its job, should be questioning power and equality and questioning the way things are (Hancock, 2016).” |
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| “It’s about perspective. I just hope that at whatever level people are working at, you have a little nagging voice like me, who is sitting at the table and saying, ‘Let’s look at the life circumstances of this group.’ Or, ‘Let’s look at where they live,’ you know? Before we fund a program (Edwards, 2015).”’ |
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| On a Common Purpose |
| “Let us never reach the stage when we cannot abandon something when shown that it is wrong or that it can be improved upon. We should not hesitate a moment when convinced that the time has come for a change. […] Time passes. Life is short. Men come and go. Possibly it is too much to hope for that the individual contribution of any one of us to the cause will be sufficient to be noticeable; but taken in the aggregate, if we carry on, play the game, give the best that is in us, may […it] may cause future generations to adjudge that our labour has not been in vain (Douglas, 1930).” |
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| Winnipeg Medical Officer of Health |
| [Referring to past public health conventions in the 1980s]. “It was just an important time to come together and to feel the unity and the purpose of a group who were invested in public health. I mean necessarily we were self-selecting, but very unifying. Because you get a spreading effect, you get people sort of infecting other people with their enthusiasm for what can be accomplished in the group who want to move things along (Mills, 2016).” |
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| On Working across Disciplines on the Social Determinants of Health |
| “The modern tendency in medicine is to recognize more and more the importance of social conditions in disease, with the result that there is a closer relation between the general practitioner and the social worker. Social service has now its recognized place in most well appointed hospitals (Porter, 1926).” |
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| President of the Canadian Public Health Association |
| “I think we’re trying to start to get together, but we also have to be respectful in health, at least, that there are many sectors who have been at this for a lot longer than we have, and we’ve got to be respectful of the hard work that they’ve put into trying to keep communities healthy with very limited resources. And so it’s a struggle, I would say. So health has to add its voice, but in a respectful way, and also know when to get out of the way (Anonymous, 2015).” |
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