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United States. Public Health Service

Division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health

The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing eight out of the department's eleven operating divisions. The Assistant Secretary for Health oversees the PHS. The Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) is the federal uniformed service of the PHS, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. PHS had its origins in the system of marine hospitals that originated in 1798. In 1871 these were consolidated into the Marine Hospital Service, and shortly afterwards the position of Surgeon General and the PHSCC were established. As the system's scope grew to include quarantine authority and research, it was renamed the Public Health Service in 1912. (Source: Wikipedia)

In 1798, Congress established the Marine Hospital Fund, a network of hospitals that cared for sick and disabled seamen. The Marine Hospital Fund was reorganized along military lines in 1870 and became the Marine Hospital Service, the predecessor to today's United States Public Health Service. The service became a separate bureau of the Treasury Department with its own staff, administration, headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the position of supervising surgeon (later surgeon general). After 141 years under the Treasury Department, the Service came under the Federal Security Agency in 1939, then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in 1953, and finally the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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VARIANT NAMES:

  • United States. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service
  • United States. Department of the Treasury. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service
  • United States. Department of the Treasury. Public Health Service
  • United States. Department of the Treasury. Bureau of the Public Health Service
  • United States. Public Health Service. Treasury Department
  • PHS (United States. Public Health Service)
  • U.S. Public Health Service

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