Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan, and the World, 1917-1960

by Yi-Tang Lin

Overview

Yi-Tang Lin presents the historical process by which statistics became the language of global health for local and international health organizations. Drawing on archival material from three continents, this study investigates efforts by public health schools, philanthropic foundations, and international organizations to turn numbers into an international language for public health. Lin shows how these initiatives produced an international network of public health experts who, across various socioeconomic and political contexts, opted for different strategies when it came to setting global standards and translating local realities into numbers. Focusing on China and Taiwan between 1917 and 1960, Lin examines the reception, adaptation, and appropriation of international health statistics. She presents the dynamic interplay between numbers, experts, and policy-making in international health organizations and administrations in China and Taiwan. This title is also available as Open Access.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108997973
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/03/2022
Series:	Global Health Histories
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	15 MB
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About the Author

Yi-Tang Lin is a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies for 2021–22.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The call for a language of public health: Philanthropic foundations, bacteriologists, and health administrators; 2. The language and dialect of health science: Public health schools and their statistical practices; 3. The language of health administrations: The League of Nations Epidemiological Intelligence Service; 4. The language of policy-making: Research and advocacy through health demonstrations; 5. Popularization at a global scale: The WHO and the postwar health statistics reporting system; 6. The art of rhetoric: Statistical standards at work, from fieldwork to world policy-making; 7. Another way of speaking? Public health statistics in the People's Republic of China; Conclusion: Numbers, experts, and policy-making.

Editorial Reviews

'Yi-Tang Lin tells a most fascinating story on how crucial the networks of the experts of public health statistics were in China's close relationship with the predecessors of WHO, and how the lives and expertise of these Chinese statisticians were played out in the ROC and the PRC in the early WHO days during the Cold War.' Tomoko Akami, The Australian National University

'Thanks to Lin we know about how a new vocabulary, intertwining numerical data, indexes and political values, promoted by scholars, health workers and policy makers became essential for the validation of Global Health during the 20th century. A remarkable contribution to Global Health studies in China and beyond, past and present.' Marcos Cueto, Fiocruz

'Today, statistics and the language of numbers dominates global health thinking and practice. Yi-Tang Lin's ground-breaking study provides a much-needed history of how this came to be. Wide ranging, well researched and clearly written, Lin's book traces the emergence of statistics in global health over the course of the 20th century.' Randall Packard, John Hopkins University

From the Publisher