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The Spirit of 1848 Caucus: A Network Linking Politics, Passion, and Public Health CALL FOR ABSTRACTS American Public Health Association 130th Annual Meeting "Putting the Public back in Public Health" Philadelphia, PA, Nov 9-13, 2002 The Spirit of 1848 Caucus is organizing 4 oral sessions and 1 poster session for the 130th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (Philadelphia, PA, Nov 9-13, 2002). The sessions will be organized around the 3 themes of our caucus, as described in our mission statement below. These themes concern the inextricable links between social justice and public health, as manifested in: the politics of public health data, social history of public health, and progressive pedagogy. 1) Politics of public health data session: Title: "Measuring & monitoring social inequalities in health in the United States" Based on discussion at the Spirit of 1848 business meeting at the 2001 APHA conference, we have decided that the Politics of Public Health Data session will be focused on issues surrounding both measuring and monitoring social inequalities in health in the United States. The session accordingly will include: (1) new work on how public health agencies are using the new multi-racial/ethnic categories deployed in the Year 2000 census to monitor social inequalities in health; (2) new work on the use of summary measures for monitoring socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequalities in maternal and infant health; (3) new work on geocoding and the use of area-based socioeconomic measures for monitoring socioeconomic inequalities in health using routine data sources; (4) a discussant reflecting on the challenges of measuring & monitoring social inequalities in the US, such as political feasibility and data limitations. All presentations for this session will be solicited. No unsolicited abstracts will be reviewed. This session will be in the Monday afternoon 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm APHA time slot. 2) History session: Title: "Live from the City of Sisterly & Brotherly Love: The Founding Mothers and Fathers of Public Health & Social Justice" Since Philadelphia is known as the home of the "founding fathers" of the United States, the Spirit of 1848's history committee thought it would be timely and appropriate to reflect on the founders (mothers and fathers, of course) of public health from around the world. We will organize a mini-extravaganza of 3-minute presentations, music, costumes, and visuals based upon figures from the distant and recent past whose work revolves around questions of social justice and public health. Each participant will pick a character--a favorite mother/father or a public health figure s/he would like to get to know better, identify a stirring/inspiring/provocative/dramatic text (part of a speech, letter, article, or book) of not more than 500 words (to be performed in 3 minutes), and prepare a brief biographical sketch for their character of not more than 100 words. An initial list of figures includes, but is not limited to: --Alice Hamilton (occupational safety and health) --Bernardino Ramazzini (occupational safety and health) --Margaret Sanger (women's health and reproductive rights) --Cesar Chavez (occupational health of migrant workers) --Emma Goldman (human rights; reproductive rights) --Friedrich Engels (social analyst and revolutionary) --Salvador Allende (health and political rights; health minister and first Socialist President of Chile) --W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington: a debate (civil, social, educational rights) --Rudolf Virchow (political, social, and health rights) --Che Guevara (health and human rights; revolutionary) --Frederick Douglass (abolition of slavery and civil rights) --Fannie Lou Hamer (civil rights) --Harriet Tubman (underground railroad; abolition of slavery) --Lillian Wald (public health nursing) --Martha May Eliot (public health nursing) --Mahatma Gandhi (liberation of colonized peoples; non-violence) --Eliza Pillars (civil rights; public health nursing) --Dorothy Boulding Ferebee (health rights, civil rights) --Johan Peter Frank (anti-poverty struggle) Participants will also be asked to attend a rehearsal at in Philadelphia on Sunday November 10, 2002, from 4-6pm. People interested in participating should email Anne-Emanuelle Birn at: aebirn@newschool.edu with the name of a figure they wish to portray, a 100-word biographical sketch, and a 500-word written excerpt from this figure by January 23, 2002. Please DO NOT submit your abstract to APHA as we will NOT be accepting abstracts for this session via the APHA website. This session will be in the Monday afternoon 4:30 to 6:00 pm APHA meeting timeslot. 3) Progressive pedagogy session: Title: "Progressive Pedagogy Session: Distance Education - Promise or Peril?... A Critical Analysis" This session will critically examine the distance education movement sweeping across higher education- examining both its potential for advancing and impeding social justice. Abstracts are invited covering the following range of topics: ~ Does the distance education movement enhance or impede our ability to reach traditionally disenfranchised groups? ~ Strategies for engaging public health students in discussion and active learning through web based courses or through the integration of web based and on-site educational experiences. ~ A look at the political economy of distance education - examining the economic motives and political contexts which have enabled distance education to take such strong hold in the academy. ~ Techniques for overcoming the perils wrought by technologically mediating an inherently human interaction. Abstracts are welcome from both students and faculty, and student abstracts are encouraged! This session will be in Tuesday morning 8:30 to 10:00 am APHA time slot. 4) Integrative session (NEW!): Title: "Latin American Social Medicine And The Quest For Social Justice & Public Health: Linking History, Data, And Pedagogy" At the APHA 2002 conference, the Spirit of 1848 will debut a new oral session, in which we integrate the 3 themes of our Caucus. These pertain to the inextricable links between social justice & public health, as embodied in: the politics of public health data, the social history of public health, and progressive pedagogy. This new session will accordingly complement our 3 other oral sessions, which provide opportunities for in-depth discussion pertaining to each of these domains. Based on discussion at the Spirit of 1848 business meeting at the 2001 APHA conference, we have decided that the focus of our first "integrative" oral session will be on "Latin American Social Medicine and the quest for social justice & public health: linking history, data, and pedagogy". Simultaneously a set of theoretical frameworks and methods for research and a movement explicitly connecting issues of social justice and public health, the varied strands of Latin American social medicine provide important insights into societal determinants of health and the kinds of social transformation necessary for achieving social equity in health. The session accordingly will include: (1) a presentation providing an overview of the social history of social medicine in Latin America; (2) a talk presenting, as a case example, hypotheses & findings of a study (or perhaps studies)premised on a theoretical perspective encompassed in Latin American social medicine; (3) a presentation describing, as a case example, a course (or perhaps a few courses) that teaches students about the ideas and methods of social medicine in Latin America (4) a discussant from a different region of the world reflecting on which aspects of Latin American social medicine are germane to the public health realities with which they contend. All presentations for this session will be solicited. No unsolicited abstracts will be reviewed. This session will be in the Monday morning 10:30 am to 12 noon APHA time slot. 5) Poster session (NEW!): Title: "Social Justice & Public Health: Student Posters" The Spirit of 1848 Caucus is soliciting abstracts from public health students that highlight the intersection between social justice and public health from a historical, epidemiological, global, and/or methodological perspective. We welcome abstracts on topics ranging from public health research to public health practice to student-initiated courses on connections between social justice & public health. Specifically, abstracts should focus on furthering understanding and action to address the ways that social inequality harms, and social equity improves, the public's health. Examples of social inequality include inequitable social divisions within societies based on social class, race/ethnicity, and gender, as well as inequitable relations between nations. We encourage submission of abstracts by students focusing on public health at all levels of study, whether for undergraduate, graduate, or professional degrees. NOTE: We will offer a **PRIZE** to the best accepted poster! & posters will be judged on scientific merit, presentation, and originality This session will be in the Tuesday afternoon 12:30 pm to 2 pm APHA time slot. If you have any questions about the proposed Spirit of 1848 sessions, please contact the relevant subcommittee session organizers, listed below: 1) Public Health Data: Nancy Krieger (nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu) Catherine Cubbin (ccubbin@stanford.edu) Kristen Marchi (kmachi@itsa.ucsf.edu) Deborah Kapell (dkapell@montefiore.org) 2) Curriculum: Marion Fass (fassm@beloit.edu) Cheryl Merzel (cm449@columbia.edu) Babette Neuberger (bjn@uic.edu) 3) History: Anne-Emanuelle Birn (aebirn@newschool.edu) Luis Avilés (laviles@ucsd.edu) Elizabeth Fee (elizabeth_fee@nlm.nih.gov) Xan Young (xyoung@edc.org) 4) Integrative session: history, data, and pedagogy Nancy Krieger (nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu) Luis Avilés (laviles@ucsd.edu) Babette Neuberger (bjn@uic.edu) 5) Poster: Pamela D. Waterman (pwaterma@hsph.harvard.edu) For additional information about the Spirit of 1848, including our mission statement and why our name is "Spirit of 1848", please see below--and also please visit our website, where you can learn more about our Caucus and see past sessions that we have organized at APHA: http://www.progressivehn.org/ SPIRIT OF 1848 MISSION STATEMENT November 2001 The Spirit of 1848: A Network linking Politics, Passion, and Public Health Purpose and Structure The Spirit of 1848 is a network of people concerned about social inequalities in health. Our purpose is to spur new connections among the many of us involved in different areas of public health, who are working on diverse public health issues (whether as researchers, practitioners, teachers, activists, or all of the above), and live scattered across diverse regions of the United States and other countries. In doing so, we hope to help counter the fragmentation that many of us face: within and between disciplines, within and between work on particular diseases or health problems, and within and between different organizations geared to specific issues or social groups. By making connections, we can overcome some of the isolation that we feel and find others with whom we can develop our thoughts, strategize, and enhance efforts to eliminate social inequalities in health. 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 and scholarly network, we have established four committees to conduct our work: 1) Public Health Data: this committee will focus on how and why we measure and study social inequalities in health, and develop projects to influence the collection of data in US vital statistics, health surveys, and disease registries. 2) Curriculum: this committee will focus on how public health and other health professionals and students are trained, and will gather and share information about (and possibly develop) 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) 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, post-colonial, 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 will help to ensure that our network's projects are grounded in this sense of history, complexity, and context. Work among these committees will be coordinated by our Coordinating Committee, which consists of two co-chairs and the chairs/co-chairs of each of the four sub-committees. To ensure accountability, all public activities sponsored by the Spirit of 1848 (e.g., public statements, mailings, sessions at conferences, other public actions) will be organized by these committees and approved by the Coordinating Committee (which will communicate on at least a monthly basis). Annual meetings of the network (so that we can actually see each other and talk together) will take place at the yearly American Public Health Association meetings. Finally, please note that we are NOT a dues-paying membership organization. Instead, we are an activist, volunteer network: you become part of the Spirit of 1848 by working on one of our projects, through one of our committees--and we invite you to join in! NB: for additional information the Spirit of 1848 and our choice of name, see: --Coordinating Committee of Spirit of 1848 (Krieger N, Zapata C, Murrain M, Barnett E, Parsons PE, Birn AE). Spirit of 1848: a network linking politics, passion, and public health. Critical Public Health 1998; 8:97-103. --Krieger N, Birn AE. A vision of social justice as the foundation of public health: commemorating 150 years of the spirit of 1848. Am J Public Health 1998; 88:1603-6 . First issued: Fall 1994; revised: November 2001; November 2001 Selected notable events in and around 1848 1840- 1847: Louis Rene Villermé publishes the first major study of workers' health in France, A Description of the Physical and Moral State of Workers Employed in Cotton, Linen, and Silk Mills (1840); in England, Edwin Chadwick publishes General Report on Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population in Great Britain (1842); first child labor laws in the Britain and the United States (1842); end of the Second Seminole War (1842); prison reform movement in the United States initiated by Dorothea Dix (1843); Frederick Engels publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844); John Griscom publishes The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York with Suggestions for Its Improvement (1845); Irish famine (1845-1848) despite high agricultural output and protests against British agricultural and trade policies; start of US-Mexican war (1846); Frederick Douglass founds The North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper (1847); Southwood Smith publishes An Address to the Working Classes of the United Kingdom on their Duty in the Present State of the Sanitary Question (1847) 1848: World-wide cholera epidemic Uprisings in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Palermo, Milan, Naples, Parma, Rome, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and Dakar; start of Second Sikh war against British in India In the midst of the 1848 revolution in Germany, Rudolf Virchow founds the medical journal Medical Reform (Medicinische Reform), and writes his classic "Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia," in which he concludes that preserving health and preventing disease requires "full and unlimited democracy" and radical measures rather than "mere palliatives" Revolution in France, abdication of Louis Philippe, worker uprising in Paris, and founding of The Second Republic, which creates a public health advisory committee attached to the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce and establishes network of local public health councils First Public Health Act in Britain, which creates a General Board of Health, empowered to establish local boards of health to deal with the water supply, sewerage, and control of "offensive trades," and also to conduct surveys of sanitary conditions The newly formed American Medical Association sets up a Public Hygiene Committee to address public health issues First Women's Rights Convention in the United States, at Seneca Falls Henry Thoreau publishes Civil Disobedience, to protest paying taxes to support the United State's war against Mexico Karl Marx and Frederick Engels publish The Communist Manifesto 1849- 1854: Elizabeth Blackwell sets up the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children (1849); Lemuel Shattuck publishes Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts (1850); founding of the London Epidemiological Society (1850); Indian Wars in the southwest and far west (1849-1892); Compromise of 1850 retains slavery in the United States and Fugitive Slave Act passed; Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852); Sojourner Truth delivers her "Ain't I a Woman" speech at the Fourth Seneca Fall convention (1853); John Snow removes the handle of the Broad Street Pump to stop the cholera epidemic in London (1854)
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