Spirit of 1848 Caucus

Our common focus is that we are all working, in one way or another, to understand and change how social divisions based on social class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and age affect the public's health. As an activist network, we have established five committees to conduct our work:

1) Public Health Data: This committee focuses on how and why we measureand study social inequalities in health, and develops projects to influence the collection of data in US vital statistics, health surveys, and disease registries.

2) Curriculum: This committee focuses on how public health and other health professionals and students are trained and, gathers and shares information about courses and materials to spur critical thinking about social inequalities in health, in their present and historical context.

3) E-Networking: This committee will focus on networking and communication within the Spirit of 1848, using e-mail, web page, newsletters, and occasional mailings.

4) Mentoring/Outreach: This committee will develop mentoring relationships, so that some of us who have been around for a while can share our experience with--and also learn from--others of us who are relatively new to public health.

5) History: This committee is an affiliate of the Sigerist Circle, an already established organization of public health and medical historians who use critical theory (Marxian, feminist, and otherwise) to illuminate the history of public health and how we have arrived where we are today; its presence in the Spirit of 1848 helps ensure our network's project are grounded in this sense of history, complexity, and context.

We develop themes for our sessions at our annual business meeting at APHA, each committee organizing at most one session. After the theme is selected, we solicit specified presentations (by both invitation and by requests for abstracts) and also advertise on our Spirit of 1848 email bulletin board if we are looking or presentations to address the selected themes.

Policy on abstracts for Year 2000 APHA conference

1) Public health data: NOT accepting abstracts

Our session will be on: "Race/ethnicity and the Year 2000 census: implications for public health data". The rationale for the session is that new racial/ethnic categories will be used in the Year 2000 census and individuals will also have, for the first time, the option of checking multiple categories. These changes have important implications for public health, in relation to conceptualization of "race/ethnicity", to the potential mismatch between health-related "numerators" and census-derived "denominators, and to monitoring and analyzing racial/ethnic inequalities in health. Speakers for the session will be drawn from an April 11, 2000 symposium on this topic already being organized by N. Krieger through the Harvard Center for Society and Health. Thus, we will NOT be accepting abstracts for this session. If you have any questions about this session, please contact either Nancy Krieger (nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu) or Cathy Cubbin (ccubbin@leland.Stanford.EDU)

2) Curriculum: Accepting abstracts

Our session will be on: "Transforming the public health curriculum: strategies and successes for promoting a social understanding of health." This session will explore developing a new set of core competencies for public health training focusing on themes of equity and social justice in addition to the relationship of social factors to health.

1. Abstracts should focus on any of the following:
2. Suggested content of a new core curriculum that includes social determinants of health and social justice issues.
3. Successful methods for teaching social determinants of health and the role of social justice in public health.
4. Identification of successful strategies for rethinking and reshaping traditional curricula.

We particularly welcome abstracts that provide examples of courses or projects that bring a historical awareness to traditional public health content. Students are especially invited to submit abstracts to this session. If you have any questions about submitting an abstract for this session or its content, please contact either Cheryl Merzel (cm449@columbia.edu) or Marion Fass (fassm@beloit.edu).

3) History: NOT accepting abstracts

The history sub-committee will NOT be organizing a separate session this year and so will NOT be accepting abstracts. Instead, the committee is including a historian in the Spirit of 1848 public health data session. If you have any questions about the history sub-committee, please contact Anne-Emanuelle Birn (aebirn@newschool.edu).

4) Mentoring: NOT accepting abstracts

The mentoring sub-committee will NOT be organizing a separate session this year and so will NOT be accepting abstracts. If you have any questions about the mentoring sub-committee, please contact Cecilia Zapata (Zapata@sou.edu).

5) E-networking: NOT accepting abstracts

The e-networking sub-committee is NOT intended to organize sessions and so will NOT be accepting abstracts. If you have any questions about the e-networking subcommittee, please contact Pam Waterman (pwaterma@hsph.harvard.edu).