The great society and health: policies for narrowing the gaps in health status between the poor and the nonpoor.

The "Great Society" may be characterized as a loosely knit program of policies for domestic reform, promulgated by the Johnson Administration in adaptation of the general philosophy and strategies of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier to certain conditions of the middle 1960s. Among these conditions were demographic, social, political, and economic dimensions, both immediate and long term. The program was marked by some diversity in the strategies of reform and in the particulars of implementing legislation, but also by a general underlying view of the state of American society, the requisites for participation in the benefits of the society, and the appropriate role of the federal government in supporting prosperity and assuring freedom.