Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Priscilla Wald, English, Duke University, Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708, 919-684-6869, pwald@duke.edu

The 1989 conference co-sponsorred by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Rockefeller University and the Fogarty International Center, put the idea of “emerging infections” widely into circulation in the scientific community. In short order, this concept became a focus of mainstream media and popular fiction and film. This talk will trace the circulation of evocative images, phrases and plotlines from the scientific literature through mainstream media and popular culture and their emergence as conventions of what I call “the outbreak narrative.” I will show how that narrative (1) registers the mutual animation of Western ideas about race, geography, and communicable disease, and (2) inflects, and thereby influences, the understandable treatment, and experience of these “emerging infections.” Coming out of my forthcoming book, Contagion: Cultures, Carriers, and the Epidemiology of Belonging, this talk argues that the way we represent global public health issues influences both social and medical outcomes and should therefore be incorporated into discussions of public health policy. I will frame my discussion within the context of the primary health care movement and the Alma Ata Declaration in order to demonstrate how the outbreak narrative complicates the important human rights analysis offered in that Declaration.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participant/learner will be able to

• recognize the impact of depictions of emerging infections in the mainstream media (journalism, fiction and film) on perceptions and experience of public health emergencies (outbreaks of communicable disease);
• describe how those depictions affect health outcomes, especially for stigmatized and underserved populations;
• identify conventions of representation (images, language) that have emerged in the media and need to be questioned;
• develop better strategies for representing emerging infections and communicating the health risks across populations.

Keywords: Emerging Diseases, Health Communications

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No