Group Weight Loss and Multiple Screening: A Tale of Two Heart Disease Programs in Postwar American Public Health

In the late 1940s, amid elevated concern about heart disease and new funding to fight it, multiple screening emerged alongside group psychotherapy for weight loss as two innovative responses of the American public health community. I describe the early trajectory and fate in the 1950s of both programs as shaped by the ongoing political controversy about national health insurance. Group weight loss became the main de facto American response to a perceived obesity-driven heart disease crisis. The episode casts light on the larger picture of how postwar American public health gravitated toward interventions centered on individual behavior and may offer lessons for obesity interventions today.