75 Happy Birthday to Us!

IT'S BEEN QUITE A RIDE!

- BY THE PREVENTION EDITORS

Since 1950, as American society has surfed waves of discovery and sometimes radically changing attitudes about health, Prevention has put it all in context for you (yes, we're claiming bragging rights!). What follows is a tiny taste of what we've all been through over the decades.

1950s

A America looked very different in 1950, the year the first issue of Prevention arrived in mailboxes across the country. Back then, polio was a major threat, mental health and women's reproductive control were only whispered about, and doctors-mostly male, mostly white, often smokingwere seen as all-knowing deities bestowing wisdom on their trusting, naive, and worshipful patients. But when readers opened the plain brown cover of Prevention issue number one, they found some revolutionary ideas. Founding editor J.I. Rodale insisted that readers advocate for their own health, think critically about the kinds of foods they ate, get outside and exercise, and question what they'd been taught for years to accept as gospel. Here we take a look at how the landscape of personal health has evolved over the past seven and a half decades and how Prevention has been therebreaking it down, sharing the facts, and empowering you, our readers, to live your healthiest lives.

1950

Founder J.I. Rodale devoted the first issue of Prevention entirely to the polio epidemic, which was killing or paralyzing more than half a million people a year. Five years later, the first polio vaccine (a shot) was being administered, joined in 1961 by the Sabin oral vaccine. Together, those innovations saved millions of lives and have prevented nearly 30 million people from being paralyzed by the disease.

1952