ABSTRACT
Public health played an important role in state-building across Central and Eastern Europe in the years following the First World War. National self-determination and a period of crisis resulting from the war and from ongoing military conflicts and population movements prompted a broad expansion of government responsibility for health and welfare. At the same time, public health programmes contributed to assertions of national sovereignty and stability, and supported political consolidation and exercises in democratisation. Local reformers transitioned humanitarian emergency relief into development projects, focusing on establishing permanent institutions to provide broadly for the population’s health. In doing so, they began to forge regional and international alliances that challenged the perception of social welfare as an exclusively domestic issue. Their mutual assistance and subsequent collaboration with the League of Nations’ Health Organisation transformed the expectations of international engagement set forth by the Paris Peace Conference.
