The role of public health agencies in addressing child and family poverty: public health nurses' perspectives.

Poverty rates among child-bearing families in industrialised countries remain unacceptably high and have significant implications for population health. Both today and in the past, public health nurses have observed the impact of poverty on family health and well-being every day in their practice; yet, their perspectives on their role in addressing child and family poverty are currently absent from the literature. This paper presents findings of a qualitative descriptive study that explored perspectives of public health nurses in an urban Canadian setting about the impact of poverty on the well-being of children and families, and the potential roles of health organisations and public health nurses in addressing this issue.

"The tubercular cow must go": business, politics, and Winnipeg's milk supply, 1894-1922.

This paper analyzes the Winnipeg health department's campaign to eliminate tuberculosis in dairy herds supplying milk to the city. It examines the complexity of creating dairy policies at a time when there was no consensus about the role that Mycobacterium bovis played in the etiology of tuberculosis in humans, and when dairy producers and consumers often resisted regulations that increased their costs. The article argues that the scientific debates about the regulation of the city's milk supply enabled physicians and veterinarians to enlarge their professional practices; that the benefits and costs of the dairy policies were not equally distributed; and that Winnipeg's milk supply remained vulnerable to both deliberate and accidental contamination throughout this period.