The National Institute of Hygiene and public health in Poland 1918-1939

As the largest country of the former Eastern bloc, Poland presents an interesting case study for the evolution of public health in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. This article looks more specifically at the interwar period when an epidemiological institute--created to deal with the epidemic aftermath of the First World War--developed into the National Institute of Hygiene (NIH), still Poland's first and foremost public health institution today. It considers the origins of the Polish hygiene movement, the influence of foreign models on Polish health structures as well as the specificities of the political and economic context of the 1920s and 1930s in relation to health issues. The foundations laid in those years seem to have played a more important role in the improvement of post war health than is commonly believed.