INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR BIOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH The Foundation evolved from a conference-meeting of 100 collegial educators, managers, legislators (including Senators and Congressmen), physicians, economists, social scientists, union personnel and lay public meeting at the Given Institute, Aspen, Colorado, in 1976. The goal was to assess issues of quality of life; ways to improve the health of mankind; and ways to initiate wise investment through cost effectiveness to enhance national health care. The Foundation was incorporated in New York as an international, non-profit, publicly supported organization committed to improving the quality of health and life of all persons of all nations, races, classes, and religions in 1979.

The Founding Officers were Professor Stacey B. Day, M.D, Ph.D, D.Sc. President and Executive Director; Dr Charles Bailey, M.D, D.Sc, J.D. Vice President; Dr Marc Kusinitz, Ph.D. Secretary. The Board of Trustees included Professor John M. Dorsey, M.D, Wayne State University Medical School, Detroit, Michigan; Ms Janine Metz, New York, N.Y; Hon. Fereydoun Hoveyda, U.N. Ambassador, New York; and Dr Mel Ravitz, Ph.D, Former Deputy Mayor, Detroit, and Director Detroit-Wayne County Community Mental Health Board, Detroit, Michigan. Legal Counsel was Lifshutz and Polland, 400 Park Avenue, New York City, N.Y.

Among Founding International Officers were Professor Fernando Lolas, M.D, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; Professor Robert Schlegel M.D, Ph.D., Chairman, Charles R. Drew Postgraduate School, Los Angeles; Dr Terence Lear M.D, FRCP, St Crispin Hospital, Northampton, UK; Professor Gabor Vida M.D., Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary; Professor Yujiro Ikemi M.D., School of Medicine, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; Dr Peter N. O. Mbaeyi Ph.D. University of Tubingen, West Germany; Professor L.N.Johri D.Sc, New Delhi, India; and Mr Israel Shenker, Journalist, Renfrewshire, Scotland.

Throughout its history the Foundation has been devoted to the principles established on the basis of the philosophy of the Biopsychosocial Way to good health. Its work has sought to to establish Comprehensive Health, Integrated Medicine, Self-Health and Self-Help, as well as Biosocial Development through International Health, Education for Health, Health Communications, Health Informatics, and encouragement of Traditional Medicine, Culture, and Ecological Care of natural resources.



S. B. Day
HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS
(International Foundation For Biosocial Development And Human Health)
Lifshutz & Polland, New York, 1979
356pp.;tables; glossaries; 14 fig.; US $26.50
ISBN 0-934314-00-4

“Health Communications” is the deceptively prosaic title of the wide-ranging, informative, and at times controversial first publication of the International Foundation for Biosocial Development and Human Health, Inc. Its author, Stacey B. Day, MD, PhD, DSc, develops concepts of health care issues and problem-solving as he anticipates they will develop within the next decade. In the context of biosocial development (his interpretation of Social Darwinism), Day synthesizes pertinent issues of communications and health care into “primary principles”, the basic ideas necessary to formulate workable health care strategies for the future.

Having spent much of the last decade seeking to improve health education and knowledge by communication of scientific information, he criticizes the present lack of broad health communication and urges more effective dissemination of such information to the nation as a whole.

Achievement of this ambitious goal ultimately depends, he feels, upon the new generation of scholars, technicians, and laymen raised during the recent socially and technologically turbulent years. In the introduction to this comprehensive work, Day excoriates “a despairing academic and pedagogic leadership unprepared, quite unqualified, superficial in the extreme, and often unfit to understand the strength (as well as the weaknesses), of its younger second-tier generation; an academic leadership often unfit psychologically and intellectually to grasp the cultural transformations working not only in this nation, but in other nations too; an academic leadership blindly unaware that the days of “democracy” in all major nations had inevitably passed to days of “technocracy”.

Thus, in the wake of what he calls the second American Civil War, fought on university campuses, in ghettoes, and by colonies of exiled youth around the world, the frayed social fabric may be renewed by resolving the so-called communications gap. Indeed he proposes that information and knowledge are the new power sources and require new types of leadership and strategies. In health especially, Day suggests that “knowledge power” be transferred to the second-tier generation, “born of an Age of Technology, nurtured in an Age of Information, and……intellectually more fit in a computer society to handle the future…..”

Day believes that the health of a people is indivisible from the forces of the nation. Moreover, biosocial development is both reflected and influenced by communications; health communications thus must deal with all spheres of influence relative to the evolution of mass, society and human welfare. It must acknowledge supranational as well as national, communal, and individual needs.

The contents of this work reflect Day’s commitment to the fostering of critical values in the realm of health care delivery and communications. Chapters on the nature of health in society and of communication provide the foundations for such diverse (yet complementary) topics as “Man in Relation to his Health Care Needs”, “Strengthening Health Care Resources”, and “Communication Strategies for Health Care”. As a result of his service as a consultant on communication to the Joint USA-USSR Exchange Program of Health Cooperation, he has included his observations and interpretations on Soviet Medical Care.

Other chapters discuss bibliographic media and information support systems, and computer-oriented health informatics. Ground-breaking in scope and content, this important work includes the candid opinions of an experienced, knowledgeable, and accomplished doctor, educator, author, and pioneer in Health Care Communications. Health Communications epitomizes the ideals of the Foundation and may indeed become recognized as a milestone in the development of Health Communications. Marc Kusenitz, Ph.D.