Introduction

This book is about the nature of change over time in post-1945 public health and the influences that have impacted on it, in terms above all of its knowledge base and dominant ideologies. Within this overall framework we examine the role of two important but neglected topics – of industry and the mass media. Our focus is on public health within different national contexts, and the role of those specific national contexts in the exchange between public health sciences and policy-making. We also analyse the importance of models from outside the health sector, from industry, disseminated at the national and the international level, and at the role of the international sphere in the process of ‘policy transfer’, of moving knowledge and policy models from one national location into another. This is a process that has been studied by political scientists, but rarely historically. ¹