The Social Survey, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and the Beginnings of the US Public Health Service’s Sickness Surveys

The earliest sickness survey of the US Public Health Service, which started in 1915, was the Service’s first socioeconomic study of an industrial community. It was also the first to define illness as a person’s inability to work. The survey incorporated the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s definition of illness, which, instead of sickness rates, focused on duration of illness as a proxy of time lost from work. This kind of survey took place in the broader context of the reform movements of the Progressive Era and the social surveys conducted in the United States, which led to the creation of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, where the Service’s sickness survey originated. The Service’s focus on the socioeconomic classification of families and definition of illness as the inability to work enabled it to show the strong link between poverty and illness among industrial workers. The leader of the survey, Edgar Sydenstricker, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company came up with new ways to measure the health of the population, which also influenced the Service’s studies of the effects of the Great Depression on public health and the National Health Survey of 1935–1936. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print October 28, 2021: e1–e9. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306454 )

Razones de verosimilitud positiva y negativa de dos índices antropométricos en el diagnóstico de las situaciones nutricionales sobrepeso y obesidad

Objetivo. Determinar si dos índices antropométricos tienen o no eficiencia pronóstica suficiente o eficiencia pronóstica moderada combinando en una sola expresión la sensibilidad y la especificidad mediante las razones de verosimilitud positiva y negativa. Material y Métodos. Enfoque epistemológico cuantitativo. Estudio epidemiológico observacional descriptivo sin direccionalidad y con temporalidad prospectiva. Se estudiaron 300 pacientes adultos de ambos géneros que acudieron al "Hospital Integral José María Morelos". Como prueba de referencia, estándar de oro o Gold Standard fue utilizada la Ecuación de la Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Resultados. Los resultados para las razones de verosimilitud positiva correspondieron a 13.4 y 1.6 para los índices antropométricos ICE y CA, respectivamente. Los resultados para las razones de verosimilitud negativa correspondieron, respectivamente, a 0.07 y 0.4 para los índices antropométricos ICE y CA. Conclusiones. Se concluye que el mejor índice antropométrico para el diagnóstico de las situaciones nutricionales patológicas sobrepeso y obesidad corresponde al Índice Cintura/Estatura, toda vez que los resultados de las razones de verosimilitud positiva y negativa reportan eficiencias pronósticas suficientes. Por otro lado, los resultados de las razones de verosimilitud positiva y negativa reportan, respectivamente, eficiencia pronóstica insignificante y eficiencia pronóstica escasa para la Circunferencia Abdominal.

Metropolitan Living: The Los Angeles Parklabrea Apartments

Reflecting a commitment to public service and an interest in abiding investments, life insurance companies after the Second World War were responsible for the construction of an unprecedented number of housing developments across the United States. They were able to help alleviate housing shortages, elevate the standards of postwar housing, and offer new forms of modern living. This article examines the practices of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and its developing of Parklabrea (now Park La Brea) in Los Angeles during the 1940s. As the largest housing community west of the Mississippi River, Parklabrea stands prominently in the center of the city, though it is elided in histories of California housing. Against the backdrop of postwar public housing, which failed in part due to a disregard for urban context, Parklabrea’s history reveals how life insurance companies were increasingly attuned to the social, physical, and economic contexts of postwar cities.

Anthropometric Assessment of Nutritional Status of Medical Students (Adolescents)

Aims: Anthropometric Assessment of Nutritional Status of Medical Students. Material and Method: The present study is carried out on 100 1st M.B.B.S. students of GSMC and tertiary care hospital (50 males and 50 females) not suffering from any major illness. Weighing scale for weight measurement, A scale to measure height (stadiometer), Calipers to measure skin fold thickness. Conclusion: According to BMI: 72% of females and 78% of males are well nourished; 8% of females and 6% of males are over nourished and 20% of females and 16% of males are under-nourished. Considering the consequences or morbidity and mortality associated with undernourishment; corrective steps in the form of improvement in dietary pattern should be undertaken and for over-nourishment; in addition to rectification of diet, more stress should also be laid on doing physical activity. Broca’s Index does not take build into consideration. It therefore gives high values for weight. On the other hand Metropolitan Life Insurance Tables give more accurate estimate of person’s nutritional status and they should be used as a reliable indicator for nutritional assessment. For Adolescent: BMI- Cutt off points as suggested by WHO should be followed rather than following the adult BMI values as the adult BMI value give a high estimate prevalence of malnutrition

Sensitive and Reliable Indicator between Broca’s Index and Metropolitan Life Insurance Height - Weight Charts in First Year Medical Student

Aims: This study was confined to healthy groups. Care was taken to exclude persons suffering from obvious disease and/ or recent history of illness Aims and Objective of present study are:- To assess out a sensitive and reliable indicator between Broca’s Index and Metropolitan Life Insurance Height - Weight charts. Materials and Methods: The present study were carried out on 100 1st M.B.B.S. students of GSMC Mumbai and Tertiary Care Hospital Mumbai (50 males and 50 females) not suffering from any major illness. Conclusion: Broca’s Index does not take build into consideration. It therefore gives high values for weight. On the other hand Metropolitan Life Insurance Tables give more accurate estimate of person’s nutritional status and they should be used as a reliable indicator for nutritional assessment. Adolescence, being an important period of physiological and psychological changes occurring in the body; is important since these changes can have effect in diet and nutrition of an individual leading to improper consumption of food and various deficiency diseases. Studies carried out on adolescents are very limited and it is needed to assess the nutritional status of adolescents

Footprints of the Twentieth Century

This chapter examines how modern American poetry dealt with skyscrapers as a theme during the 1910s. The most potent icons of modernity in the early twentieth-century city were great buildings, structures of unprecedented scale and grandeur that punctuated the skyline and symbolized the metropolitan ethos. Carrying a wide range of symbolic meanings, skyscrapers and other great buildings, such as Manhattan's Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, drew strong interest from anyone seeking to represent urban modernity, from painters and sculptors to photographers, commercial artists, and the many Americans who began writing city poems in the early 1910s, including Sara Teasdale, Harriet Monroe, and Carl Sandburg. This chapter discusses the American poet's fascination with the skyscraper, which commands attention not only for its enormous degree of visual prominence but also for its tremendous, if profoundly paradoxical, signifying power.

Diet Monitoring Software

Obesity has been a known problem for over 60 years. As early as 1943, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company declared “Overweight is so common that it constitutes a national health problem of the first order.” In 1952, the American Heart association identified obesity as a cardiac risk factor (AHA, 1952). In 1974, obesity was identified as “the most important nutritional disease in the affluent countries of the world” (LANCET editorial, 1974). Over a few decades, the obesity epidemic has continually been creeping up in all developed countries around the world; this has accelerated rapidly in the last decade, and it appears to have reached a crisis level with unprecedented numbers, particularly in America, joining the overweight or obese categories (Anderson, Konz, Frederich, & Wood, 2001; Mokdad, Serdula, Dietz, Bowman, Marks, Koplan, 1999).