Challenges and opportunities in documenting the recent history of public health: The health of Bristol after 1948

Evans, David

Abstract

How do you find the sources to write the history of the health of a city, particularly for the late twentieth century and into the digital age? This article explores this challenge in the case of the city of Bristol in the United Kingdom during the period from the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, through the transfer of the public health function from local government to the NHS in 1974 and up until the return of public health back to local government in 2013. The aims of the article are to scope the extant paper and digital official and academic documentary sources for the history of public health in the city, to critically assess the availability and completeness of the sources and to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of integrating earlier paper records with more recent digital ones.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 2, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 27, 2018
• Publication Date: May 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Feb 1, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 28, 2020
• Journal: Social History of Medicine
• Print ISSN: 0951-631X
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-4666
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 641-658
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hky104
• Keywords: Bristol, city, public health, sources, twentieth century
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1435296
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hky104
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Social History of Medicine following peer review. The version of record [Evans, D. (2018) Challenges and opportunities in documenting the recent history of public health: The health of Bristol after 1948. Social History of Medicine. ISSN 0951-631X] is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hky104.
• Contract Date: Feb 1, 2019