National Social Hygiene Day

The idea of a National Social Hygiene day grew out of experience with many regional meetings in all parts of the country. Following the Associations Annual Meeting and the Fourth Annual Regional Conference of the Social Hygiene Council of Greater New York, held on January 15, 1936, the committee responsible for steering this highly successful series of New York conferences received a report from it's Secretary, Dr. Jacob A. Goldberg, upon the unusual number of inquiries from other parts of the country concerning the New York program. The American Social Hygiene Association confirmed this experience in regard to its Annual Meeting. Many Association members and executives of state and local social hygiene societies had written that they wished they might attend but were prevented by pressure of local work and by budgets shorn of travel expense.

The suggestion was made -- "Why not propose to these groups in other cities that next year they hold Regional Conferences simultaneously with the New York Conference?" Members of the national Association could be drawn into these conferences, programs comparable to that of the parent organization could be worked up and a sort of "stay-at-home" annual meeting could thus be held all over the country which would allow participation in the national program by Association members and friends, stimulate local discussion of social hygiene questions, bring in new interests, and perhaps serve as a peg on which to hang considerable public information through the newspapers and magazines.

The Committee approved and the National Association liked the idea. The taboo on public discussion of syphilis and gonorrhea seemed about to relax to some extent. The Chicago Sunday Tribune and the New York Daily News had recently published special series of articles on syphilis and gonorrhea which had met with wide approval. Other newspapers were following suit. It was known that Surgeon General Thomas Parran, just appointed to head up the United States Public Heath Service, would be glad to see a project of this kind undertaken by voluntary agencies to back up the government campaign. Other circumstances indicated that the time was ripe to launch a national education effort. - Excerpt of the article, "The First National Social Hygiene Day by Jean B. Pinney from the Journal of Social Hygiene March 1937 (The full text of the article is available online through Cornell University.)

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