Self-Care: Lay Initiatives in Health

Drawing on the concepts and resources developed at the first international symposium on the role of the individual in primary care, the authors of this book, originally published in 1977, delineate self-care and its relationship to professional care, reasons for the interest in self-care and a framework for future research. Self-care is a major factor in health and holds promise of even greater impact through educational development, the authors argue. They maintain that self-care is additive to society’s ability to overcome many existing barriers to health care accessibility, quality and accountability. In this sense, the authors argue, self-care must be viewed as the first option, with any alternatives involving professional care gives being supportive and residual.

This volume played an important role in the research on self-care which surged during the 1970s.

Lowell S. Levin (1927-2019) was Emeritus Professor at Yale University. At the School of Public Health, Professor Levin developed innovative educational programs, including founding the school’s global health division. He was committed to health promotion, and pioneered the citizen participation movement, which focused on health communication and the social and behavioral factors affecting health. Subsequently, he brought attention to the role of non-professional resources in strengthening personal capacity for health and well-being, primarily via self-care, and pressed for improvement in the quality of medical care. For over thirty-five years, he served as an advisor to the World Health Organization’s European Region, as well as to NGOs in Europe, Latin America, the Commonwealth Caribbean and the United States. In European countries, he worked to develop cross-departmental collaborations at the national level to improve the impact on health of diverse public policies in such areas as the environment, agriculture, employment, education, communications and tourism. Clarifying the links between poverty, social inequity and health, Professor Levin’s work increased policy makers’ awareness of the need to make “healthy public policies” through intersectoral action designed to optimize the benefits of collaborative health interventions in effective and sustainable ways.

Alfred H. Katz (1916-2001),professor at the UCLA School of Public Health and the School of Public Policy and Social Research provided a bridge between the clinical interests of medicine and social welfare and the population-based interests of public health. His research centered on human behavior within the context of health and illness, with particular interests in the application of research findings drawn from biological evidence, clinical evidence and studies of individuals, families and larger social institutions. He obtained his master’s degree in psychology at the University of New Zealand in 1936, and the Doctor of Social Welfare (D.S.W.) in 1957 from Columbia University. Dr. Katz worked as a practitioner, administrator, and researcher in family and child welfare, and industrial and health social work for 15 years in New Zealand, New York City, St. Louis, Willow Run, Michigan, and Brooklyn before and while completing his doctoral work. Professor Katz came to UCLA in 1958 as head of the Division of Social Welfare in Medicine in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the School of Medicine, with faculty appointments in Public Health, Social Welfare, Nursing, and Preventive Medicine. He was instrumental in forming the Division of Population, Family and International Health in the School of Public Health, which subsequently became part of the Department of Community Health Sciences. Dr. Katz published more than 50 scientific papers, 30 chapters, and nine books. His early research focused on the psychological well-being, physical health, rehabilitation and community integration of disabled and handicapped populations, with particular emphasis on hemophilia.

In the mid-1960s Professor Katz became interested in lay group counseling and self-help movements, originally within the context of rehabilitation and disability. He published a number of chapters and books on self-help. In 1999, Professor Katz founded and was the first editor of the International Journal of Self Help and Self Care, which was designed to be a source of information on current developments, activities, and innovations in self-help groups and organizations around the world.

Professor Katz was active in the international community, holding visiting professorships at the London School of Economics, Hebrew University (Jerusalem), and the Universities of Aberdeen and Copenhagen. He served as the chairman of the Committee on Public Relations and Development at the Post-Graduate Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, and as co-chairman of the UCLA-University of Copenhagen Joint Center for Studies of Health Programs. Professor Katz served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, presented papers at numerous international meetings.

Erik Holst