Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/300

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Health
273
  1. Popular health instruction should receive more emphasis than heretofore. Motion pictures dealing with health should be shown to reservation Indians as well as to school children. Lectures and conferences with Indians on health could well be used more. Where the Indians have a written language, health pamphlets in these languages could well be distributed. Special baby clinics could be more generally held.
  2. The policy of the Indian Service should be to attain maximum possible coöperation with the public health authorities of the states and counties in which Indian jurisdictions are located. Insofar as practicable the state and local organizations should be utilized even if this arrangement requires some payment to the state or local authority from national or tribal funds, but where this payment is made the national government should exercise at least some supervisory authority to see that service to the Indians is adequate. 1
  3. The Indian Service, through the recommended Division of Planning and Development, should enlist the coöperation of private national and state health organizations and of national societies of the various classes of public health workers. Among the first group may be mentioned national and state organizations interested especially in tuberculosis, infant care, trachoma, and venereal diseases ; among the second, the associations of public health nursing, general nursing, and social service. Wherever private organizations are willing to coöperate with the Indian Service in demonstrating the practicability of a program, or in experimenting to determine the practicability of a program believed sound, maximum coöperation should be extended.
  4. An adequate system for the collection, tabulation, and use of vital statistics should be immediately installed. The first step in this direction should be a reasonably liberal appropriation for a competent statistician and a small corps of experienced statistical clerks. The second step should be the preparation of suitable forms and instructions. In devising forms the effort should be made to use the forms of the state in which the jurisdiction is located insofar as they are applicable or at least to make them supply all information required by the state. The third step should be to arrange for the examination of the returns, their tabulation, and their use as a device for controlling and directing the public health work.
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