Dr. Henry Foster urges public health solutions for social problems

By Linda Grace-Kobas

While it is fundamentally important to use a public health approach to solving social problems in America, public health issues are not being adequately addressed, said Dr. Henry Foster, a featured speaker March 30 at the College of Human Ecology's weekend centennial celebration.

Dr. Henry Foster, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University, lectures in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall, March 30. Barry DeLibero/University Photography

Because basic public health initiatives are often inadequately funded or even ignored, sometimes in favor of high-tech approaches in medicine, Americans don't get a good return compared to other nations on the trillion dollars they spend every year on health care, Foster said. He spoke in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall.

Dean emeritus of Meharry Medical College and currently clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University, Foster has spent a long career involved in public health, particularly teen-age pregnancy. He pioneered a national model for regionalized perinatal health systems in the 1970s and the "I Have a Future Program" to reduce teen pregnancies in the 1980s, an effort that was named one of the 1,000 Points of Light by the George Bush administration in 1991. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences at age 38.

In spite of excellent medical schools that educate the best physicians in the world, "health care outcomes for our own citizens are substandard to other developed countries, particularly for minorities and African-American men," he said. He cited statistics on teenage pregnancy, life expectancy, infant mortality and cancer that demonstrated that the United States lags behind other developed countries in meeting the basic health needs of its citizens.

"This country really needs a domestic Marshall Plan," he declared, saying that only an effort that compares to the American initiative to rebuild Europe after World War II will bring delivery of basic health care to all its citizens. "Strong inner city communities will make a better America," Foster said.

"Social justice and health care are interdependent," he added. "Americans must come to grips with their responsibility. Health care is not a privilege, it's a right. If every criminal has a right to have a lawyer, then surely every child has a right to have a doctor."

In 1995, President Bill Clinton nominated Foster for the post of Surgeon General, after Jocelyn Elders was forced to step down because of conservative activists who objected to remarks she made about sex education, particularly masturbation. His nomination was blocked by conservative senators over the issue of abortion.

The political process and its role in health care came up several times in the question-and-answer period. In response to a question from a nurse practitioner who felt the nation's health care system is near collapse, Foster said that solutions won't come from Washington in the next four years.

"The answer will come from the people and the power of the vote," he said. "We have to try to keep the pressure on. We don't have to wait four years, but only two years until [midterm elections in] 2002. We can change the landscape if we get organized and get busy."

In response to another question, Foster said he thinks George W. Bush's efforts in "faith-based" solutions to social problems are "a very dangerous route to take," but that the initiative "will die of its own weight."

He kept coming back to the importance of voting and selecting leaders who will address social and health problems directly. "We have to get people in [office] who can do what we did in the '60s," when Medicare, Medicaid and Title X were passed, he said. It will take another generation to turn around the problems in the inner cities, he predicted, but that's only 30 years, and "there are programs that work."