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

Abstract

This book explores how an international health statistics system was built and implemented as statistical practices developed in public health schools (Johns Hopkins University and Peking Union Medical College), intergovernmental health organizations (the League of Nations, UNRRA, and the WHO), and philanthropic programs were transferred to the Chinese republics. Drawing on archival sources from three continents, the book follows a transnational network of experts who lay the foundation for the trust in numbers that characterizes international health governance today. International organizations opted for different strategies when standardizing their health statistics: whereas the League of Nations only included statisticians from North Atlantic countries in its standard-making, the WHO took local knowledge into account by tailoring its standards to local capacities. Individual experts also adapted their strategies for collecting and standardizing statistics to different geopolitical and administrative contexts. Interwar experts tended to simply dismiss the numbers and relied on their authority when promoting their programs, but statistics came to play a greater role in policy decisions in the postwar years. Experts both within and outside the WHO mobilized their public health knowledge to select and report statistics to support their arguments.