Montana's Seventh Legislative Assembly created the State Board of Health of Montana in 1901. The Board was to "have the general care of the sanitary interests of the people" and was authorized to "make sanitary investigations and inquiries respecting the causes of disease, and especially epidemics, the causes of mortality and the influence of locality, employment, habits, and other circumstances and conditions, upon the health of the people." In 1967, with the creation of the State Department of Health, the State Board of Health was given the additional duty of overseeing the new department. The State Department of Health was abolished in 1971 and replaced with the Department of Health and Environmental Sciences. The same laws that created the new department continued the State Board of Health, but renamed it as the Board of Health and Environmental Sciences. This Board continued in existence until 1994.
The State Board of Health was responsible for the administration and enforcement of laws related to public health, including ensuring pure foods and drugs, inspecting tourist campgrounds, and licensing related businesses. The Food and Drug Division of the Board administered these sections of the law. The division director, sanitarian, and tourist campground inspector routinely conducted field inspections on restaurants, food- or drug-related businesses, hotels, tourist campgrounds, and water supplies to ensure sanitary conditions. The Food and Drug Division also licensed public eating places, meat markets, food manufacturers, soft drink manufacturers and distributors, and tourist campgrounds.
In October 1947 Governor Sam C. Ford appointed the Montana Health Planning Committee representing over forty professional, educational, farm, labor, civic, and welfare groups and official and voluntary agencies concerned with health and the general welfare. The Committee was to "seek to determine the health needs and resources of Montana, to make these known to the people of the State, to plan an adequate program for meeting needs, and to assist in carrying out such a program." The recommendation of the Committee was to organize local health planning councils to study local problems and plan for improvement in local areas. Activities of the Committee included sponsoring community organizations for Health workshops. The Committee worked closely with the Montana State Board of Health, Division of Public Health Education.
This collection consists of minutes; reports submitted to the State Board of Health from the Missoula City-County Health Department (1920, 1922, 1962-1964), from state health officers concerning typhoid fever in Warland, Stevensville, Helena, Thurlow, and Libby (1925-1929), on industrial hygiene of the Zonolite Company of Libby (1956), and Montana Public Health plans (1955-1959); and materials removed from a scrapbook (1946-1950) on the history and activities of the Montana Health Planning Committee. The Food and Drug Division subgroup (1919-1970) consists of general and interoffice correspondence; court papers; press releases; reports, including field investigation reports, biannual and biennial reports to the State Board of Health, and others; speeches; subject files; and miscellany. (Photographs and printed materials were separated from the collection and transferred to the Photograph Archives and the Library respectively. Lists of items separated are included in the collection.)
The collection is arranged by subgroup and then by series.
Collection open for research.
Researchers must use collection in accordance with the policies of the Montana Historical Society. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collection. In some cases permission for use may require additional authorization from the copyright owners. For more information contact an archivist.
In 2024, the various collections of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services were integrated under one collection identifier, RS 495, in order to help facilitate access, reduce redundancy in the Montana Historical Society catalog, and to follow best archival practices.
Collections from Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services' various Divisions
and Bureaus that were previously treated as separate entities are now integrated into
Item description and date. Collection Title. Collection Number. Box and Folder numbers. Montana Historical Society Library & Archives, Helena, Montana.
Acquisition information is available upon request.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the Montana Historical Society Archives catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search under these terms.
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection