public health
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
7/5/2023
"Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
For more than a century people have made excuses for the death and dismemberment caused by automobiles as if it were a phenomenon of nature.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
6/30/2023
Americans Will Regret Dismissing 100 Years of Public Health Progress
by Craig Spencer
Politicians have felt free to attack public health authorities to score points in the wake of the pandemic because the profession's achievements have allowed the public to forget just how much damage contagious illness can cause.
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SOURCE: Science
6/13/2023
Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
Census data analysis by demographic historian J. David Hacker and health researcher J’Mag Karbeah correlate indexes of racial segregation with child mortality rates as a proxy for overall population health and conclude that the gap between black and white infant mortality grew the more segregated a city was.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
6/21/2023
Want to Understand the Internet? Consider the "Great Stink" of 1858 London
Bad information online is a concern. But the history of public health shows that understanding how it spreads and circulates is critical to fighting it.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/23/2023
Vivek Murthy's Advice Against Social Media Use for Kids Latest in Surgeon General Warnings
While past surgeons general succeeded in warning the public away from cigarettes and drunk driving, other public health issues have been more difficult subjects for persuasion.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/14/2023
Historical Data on Mosquito Range Shows Climate Change is Spreading Malaria Risk
Data stretching back to 1898 show mosquitoes spreading further from the equator in Africa year by year, with recent acceleration consistent with climate change estimates.
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SOURCE: National Library of Medicine
1/22/2023
National Library of Medicine Announces 2023 History Talks
NLM History Talks promote awareness and use of NLM and related historical collections for research, education, and public service in biomedicine, the social sciences, and the humanities.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
12/12/2022
Why Has American Progress Stalled? Blame Our Belief in "Eureka!"
Moments of creative innovation matter, but invention depends on a society that is prepared to take advantage and distribute the benefits.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/5/2022
A Whitmer-DeSantis Showdown Would Put Two Visions of Public Health on the Ballot
by Andrew Wehrman
History suggests that Whitmer's approach to public responsibility for pandemic control works better than DeSantis's individualistic framework for controlling disease. Which one might win votes is another question.
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SOURCE: Nature
12/5/2022
How Smallpox Inoculation Brought a New Nation Together
The need to control smallpox outbreaks helped a public-minded spirit of disease prevention to override rampant individualism in the years surrounding the American Revolution, argues historian Andrew Wehrman.
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11/13/2022
Monkeypox Has Been Around for Decades; This Outbreak is a Product of Neglect
by Alessandro Hammond and Cameron Sabet
The world's response to viral outbreaks in poor nations demonstrates the hoarding of resources in the Global North, but it's ultimately self-defeating for rich nations, too.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
9/23/2022
The Risks of Declaring the Pandemic Over
by Molly Nebiolo
As long as America has had pandemics, it has had leaders who sought political benefit by declaring them over, so Joe Biden is in good company. But moving on needs to include planning ahead.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
9/23/2022
COVID Shows the US as a Country Kept from Grieving
Historians Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams have edited a new collection of essays putting the pandemic in historical perspective, with contributors showing how the pandemic robbed us of both life and time.
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SOURCE: Texas Observer
9/8/2022
I was Fired for Asking My Students to Wear Masks
by Michael Phillips
Sometimes academic freedom is about the ability of professors to advocate on behalf of the campus community's health against administrators who prefer silence as a matter of political expediency.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
8/13/2022
Asking Gay Men to be Cautious Over Monkeypox Isn't Homophobia
by Jim Downs
"Protecting gay men from discrimination and stigmatization today does not require public-health officials to tiptoe around how monkeypox is currently being transmitted."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
8/12/2022
Monkeypox is a Failure to Learn from HIV-AIDS Activists
by Dan Royles
Attention to messaging – efforts to advise communities of gay men at risk of infection without stigma – has hidden a deeper message of AIDS activism in the 1980s: demands for an equitable and affordable health care system.
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SOURCE: Nursing Clio
7/28/2022
Can America Apply Lessons from HIV/AIDS Crisis to Deal with Monkeypox?
by Dan Royles
Public health debates on monkeypox need to look at the history of health messaging about HIV-AIDS to focus on communities of gay men currently at risk while avoiding triggering homophobic responses and stigma.
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SOURCE: New York Times
7/6/2022
Ending the Illusion that Smoking is a Choice
by Sarah Milov
Tobacco companies still promote the convenient fiction that users addicted to the nicotine in their products are making a free choice to consume them.
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SOURCE: Hartford Courant
6/3/2022
Professor Discusses the use of Asylum Scenes in "Stranger Things"
Troy Rondinone's expertise on cultural portrayals of mental health facilities connects with two key plotlines in the latest season of the Netflix horror series.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
6/2/2022
Can We Stop Cars from Killing People?
American cyclists and pedestrians are the victims of a century-long political campaign to reorganize public space around the needs of drivers, according to historian Peter Norton. Activists including the families of traffic victims are fighting to change that.
News
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- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel