CALL FOR ABSTRACTS — 141st APHA Annual Meeting

Theme: Think Global, Act Local: Best Practices Around the World

Spirit of 1848 Caucus

Submission Deadline: Tuesday, February 5, 2013

a) present our program theme: “The Politics of Global Climate Change: Social Justice, Sustainable Economies & Ecologies, and Health Equity”;

b) provide the rationale for our program theme; and

c)  provide the specific details for the call for abstracts for each of our 5 Spirit of 1848 sessions (4 oral sessions; 1 poster session), which together address the 3 foci of our caucus, pertaining to the inextricable links between social justice and public health, as manifested in: (1) the politics of public health data, (2) the social history of public health, and (3) progressive pedagogy.

A) SPIRIT OF 1848 SESSION THEME:

THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE:
SOCIAL JUSTICE, SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIES & ECOLOGIES, AND HEALTH EQUITY

The theme of the 141^st annual meeting of APHA, November 2-6, 2013, in Boston, MA, is “Think Global, Act Local: Best Practices Around the World.” We have decided that to address this theme, we want all of our sessions to raise the challenge – including to ourselves – of an immense critical issue that intimately links the global & the local, with profound implications for equity, economic policies, political priorities, and public health: that of global climate change.

-- Abstracts for the Spirit of 1848 sessions are due on Tuesday, February 5, 2013.

-- Abstract submission opens on Friday, December 14, 2012); all relevant instructions can be found at the APHA abstract submission website; see:

            http://www.apha.org/meetings/sessions/

See also below, at the bottom, the APHA reminders re abstract requirements, including:

(a) abstract word limit of 250 words; and

(b) how to ensure the presentation is eligible for continuing education (CE) credits – AND WE STRONGLY REQUEST THAT ANYONE SEEKING TO PRESENT IN A SPIRIT OF 1848 SESSON PREPARE THEIR ABSTRACT IN ACCORD WITH THE CE REQUIREMENTS (WHICH ARE QUITE MINIMAL) SO THAT FOLK ATTENDING APHA CAN GET CE CREDITS FOR ATTENDING OUR SESSIONS WITH THEIR SOCIAL JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE ON PUBLIC HEALTH!

To learn more about the Spirit of 1848 Caucus and sessions we have organized at past APHA meetings, please see our mission statement below and please also visit our website at:  http://www.spiritof1848.org

B) RATIONALE FOR OUR SPIRIT OF 1848 PROGRAM THEME

Our sense is that public health discussions regarding critical links between global climate change, health equity, economic systems, political systems, and social justice, are in their very early stages.

Key issues include:

(a) how to meet the material and energy needs of the myriad people on this planet subjected to economic deprivation, as differently experienced and prevalent in low-, middle-, and high-income countries,

while at the same time

(b) reduce the excessive material consumption and energy use in economically wealthy nations whose ways of living have been constructed by dominant economic and political systems to consume resources and energy at levels that are not sustainable for well-being on this planet.

Of note, one framework raised in the environmental literature for approaching these intertwined issues of deprivation and excess is that of “contraction and convergence.” The overall goal is to: (1) raise the energy use of people subjected to economic deprivation to levels needed for sustainable meaningful and healthy lives, and simultaneously (2) reduce the excessive energy use of those who use way more so that it contracts down and converges to this same sustainable and healthy level of energy use. Analogies to progressive calls for wealth and income redistribution are highly pertinent.

Also still nascent are the critically needed links of public health activists & academics & practitioners – whether in governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, and other agencies and institutions –

to the many activist organizations and to other disciplines and fields of work and study that are tackling issues of global climate change but who do not (yet) have public health & health equity concerns integrated in their agendas. Examples of such work include critical organizing, albeit without an explicit link to health equity concerns, that is focused on mitigation (or what in public health is more typically termed “prevention”) of environmental degradation and exploitation, excess carbon & energy use, and the environmental and social problems caused by economic systems whose growth depends on endless consumerism and ever-increasing “growth.”

We therefore see this next APHA meeting as offering us an opportunity to educate ourselves and create ties in a way that will further the urgent political and transformative work needed to deal with the realities and perils posed by global climate change. In our view, there is considerable wisdom to draw upon, by engaging with insights arising from the ideas, research, and activism evident in:

-- Indigenous frameworks & movements, as articulated by activists, academics, and those involved in governance and policy, as per the ideas of  Buen Vivir being articulated in Bolivia, about living well, not living better, also approaches to conservation and sustainable use of the material world in which we live, including but not limited to energy resources and forestry, fishery, and farm management;

-- the work of environmental activists, academics, and others in & outside of government, including those engaged in environmental justice work and who are tackling the profound issues of political, economic, and energy exploitation and redistribution that are central to the politics of global climate change;

-- the work of activists and academics, and others in & outside of government, who are engaged in promoting and protecting reproductive rights and reproductive justice and who are challenging the re-emergence of regressive “population control” discourses by developing frameworks that simultaneously address issues of sustainability & reproductive rights;

-- the proposals of progressive economists, political ecologists, urban planners, and material scientists, who are independently and jointly developing ideas for how low-carbon, slow-growth economies geared towards equitable well-being could realistically function, and at the same time are also documenting the harmful impacts of economies premised on unlimited economic growth and extraction and that rely on manufacturing desire and envy to provoke endless consumerism, creating both material and mental harm;

-- the initiatives of activists already creating the seeds of transitional economies; and

-- the small but growing number of public health researchers analyzing the projected health impacts of global climate change from a health equity standpoint and who are also developing estimates of likely public health “co-benefits” of low-carbon economies (e.g., in relation to increased use of public transportation, reduced air pollution, changes in agricultural practices, including stopping diversion of food crops to biofuels, etc).

Accordingly, to cast the net wide, we have prepared a “call for abstracts” that both welcomes unsolicited abstracts and also seeks out invited abstracts from speakers who can address particular topics. Our hope is to develop an engaging and thought-provoking series of sessions – per our usual format of sessions focused on history, the politics of public health data, and progressive pedagogy -- that will teach us, challenge us, and inform the activism and action we can take.

C) SPECIFIC CALL FOR ABSTRACTS FOR EACH SPIRIT OF 1848 SESSION

The sessions we are organizing for APHA 2013 (listed in the chronological order in which they will be presented at the APHA meeting) are:

1) SOCIAL HISTORY OF PUBLIC HEALTH SESSION -- APHA 2013

The History Sub-Committee of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus (American Public Health Association) is issuing an open call for abstracts as well as seeking invited abstract proposals for our session titled: “RESOURCE INEQUALITIES & HEALTH INEQUITIES: CONNECTING THE LOCAL AND GLOBAL IN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS, CRITIQUE, AND BEST PRACTICES.” All abstracts are due on Feb 5, 2013.

Given the meeting's theme "Think Local, Act Global: Best Practices Around the World," and the Spirit of 1848’s choice to focus on the connection between global and local in relation to: “The Politics of Global Climate Change: Social Justice, Sustainable Economies & Ecologies, and Health Equity,” The Spirit of 1848 History Sub-Committee seeks papers that will address the local and the global in the context of energy and natural resource inequality and public health challenges from a historical perspective. Topics might include:

• Redistributive energy and social welfare policy in historical context
• Politics of measuring environmental and resource inequalities in local, national, and international/transnational contexts.
• “Scarcity” and “abundance” and the fictions of "beyond oil" and supply-side solutions.
• Resource use: how societies across the world have dealt equitably and sustainably with natural resource vicissitudes (oil, land, forests, etc.) through  social/indigenous/civil society movements (e.g. movements such as Buen Vivir, etc.)
• Resource inequality and precarity: Water and water politics across the generations

The session will be held on the Monday morning of APHA (Nov 4, 2013), in the 10:30am to noon time slot. It is being co-organized by Samuel Roberts (email: skroberts@columbia.edu), Anne-Emanuelle Birn (email: ae.birn@utoronto.ca), Sarah Ramírez  (email: sarahmramirez@gmail.com), and Luis Avilés (email: luis.aviles3@upr.edu).

2) POLITICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH DATA SESSION -- APHA 2013

For APHA 2013, our politics of public health data session, titled “THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH DATA: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, PUBLIC HEALTH, AND HEALTH EQUITY” will accept both solicited & unsolicited abstracts (i.e., we have both an open call for abstracts as well as will be seeking invited abstracts). All abstracts are due Feb 5, 2013.

The objective of our session is to spur critical public health thinking and action regarding data and the public health and health equity impacts of global warming, both in the US and elsewhere. Although we recognize that the adverse effects of global climate change on other non-human species (e.g., animals, plants) are critically important and must be addressed in their own right (regardless of their implications for human health), we nevertheless are seeking abstracts that focus on health inequities among people as linked to the politics and realities of global climate change. At issue is how global climate change can affect human health inequities both directly and also indirectly (e.g., by affecting other animals, plants, and microorganisms in ways that then affect human health and health inequities).

Although not exclusive, examples of abstract topics we are interested in include: 

(1) Empirical research, including simulations and projections, whether at the global, regional, national, or sub-national level, on links between global climate change and health inequities (within and between regions/nations);

(2) Empirical research, including simulations and projections, on the health “co-benefits” and implications for health equity of shifting to lower carbon-economies (e.g., more public transportation, more walking, less meat consumption, less air pollution) among nations who currently and historically have disproportionately produced greenhouse gases;

(3) Empirical research on the health consequences, and implications for health equity, of community efforts to promote “buen vivir” (“living well,” as opposed to living better than others) and related frameworks that emphasize sustainable human development;

(4) Empirical research on health inequities linked to adverse consequences of unsustainable energy extraction and production (e.g., drilling for or transporting fossil fuel, fracking, unsustainable production of biofuels in ways that harm local/regional ecosystems and use of land, water, and crops for food);

(5) Empirical research on the health inequities caused by inequities in energy consumption, including the health problems affecting people who lack adequate access to energy to live healthy lives;

(6) Empirical research on health inequities in relation to the adverse health consequences (mental and physical), including health inequities, linked to political economies premised on unsustainable growth and overconsumption in response to “manufactured desires”;

(7) Methodologies to link measures of global climate change to measures of health inequities, and/or recommendations on types of data collection that are required for monitoring these links;

(8) Data on, and evaluation of approaches toward, global climate change activism and environmental justice activism that is focused on links between global climate change and health inequities (or health equity);

(9) Mixed methods approaches to analyzing links between the political and economic determinants of health inequities and the political and economic determinants of denialism of global warming (and the interests underlying such denials); and

(10) Empirical analysis of the visual display of public health data as it relates to global climate change and health equity, including in relation to any of the above-listed topics.

The session will be organized by the Spirit of 1848’s Politics of Public Health Data Committee and it will take place during the Monday afternoon 2:30 to 4:00 pm APHA time slot (November 4, 2013). If you have any questions, please contact the session organizers, who are Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Catherine Cubbin (email: ccubin@austin.utexas.edu), Vanessa Simonds (email: vanessa-simonds@uiowa.edu), and Nancy Krieger (email: nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu).

3) INTEGRATIVE SESSION -- APHA 2013

Starting with the APHA 2002 Conference, the Spirit of 1848 – whose sessions focus on the inextricable links between social justice & public health – has sponsored an “integrative” session which integrates the three themes of our Caucus: the social history of public health, the politics of public health data, and progressive pedagogy for public health.

For APHA 2013, our integrative session, titled “SOCIAL JUSTICE & THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: GOVERNANCE, POLITICAL ECONOMY, POLITICAL ECOLOGY, AND HEALTH EQUITY – GLOBAL, NATIONAL, AND INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES” will accept only solicited abstracts. The objective is to spur integrated and critical public health thinking and action regarding the critical twin tasks of:

(a) envisioning and creating equitable and ecologically sustainable economies & ways of living that afford everyone the possibility of living healthy & meaningful lives, and

(b) combating global climate change and the corporations, governments, and global institutions who push for and profit from political economies premised on fossil fuel and the non-sustainable exploitation of the earth, sea, animals, and plants, along with human labor, for non-sustainable production of material commodities.

The session’s three speakers will grapple with these complex issues from the perspectives of 3 different but interconnected levels of governance & accountability: (1) global, (2) national state (including federal-regional-local), and (3) Indigenous tribal/First nation. Each presentation will be historically grounded, analyze current realities, and offer ideas for next steps we in public health can take to address the politics of global climate change and its collective and differential embodied consequences for the world’s peoples and other species with which we inhabit this earth – as shaped by the power relations and property inequities underlying the social divisions between and within the global North and global South, including in relation to class, nationality, Indigenous status, immigrant status, race/ethnicity, and gender.

The session will be organized Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Nancy Krieger (email: nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu), Vanessa Simonds (email: vanessa-simonds@uiowa.edu), Anne-Emanuelle Birn (email: ae.birn@utoronto.ca) and Luis Avilés (email: luis.aviles3@upr.edu). As usual, it will take place during the Monday afternoon 4:30 to 6:00 pm APHA time slot (November 4, 2013).

4) PROGRESSIVE PEDAGOGY SESSION -- APHA 2013

This session, titled “PROGRESSIVE PEDAGOGY: CLIMATE CHANGE, SUSTAINABILITY AND HEALTH EQUITY” will have an open call for abstracts (due Feb 5, 2013) that critically examine teaching about links between global climate change, sustainable (or non-sustainable) economies and ecologies, and health equity both in and outside of academic settings and across the spectrum of social and economic groups.  Since local action produces global change as well as the reverse, we are particularly interested in pedagogies that promote the critical thinking and actions that transform that binary.

Some possible topic might include:

1) Teaching about climate change activism: how local action can promote global changes;

2) Organizing and teaching about sustainable systems of production and consumption that promote health equity;

3) Pedagogy that fosters collaboration and solidarity between the global north and south or between the poor and affluent in the U.S. in relation to issues of global climate change, sustainable economies and ecologies, and health equity;

4) Courses that critically teach about global climate change and its implications for health inequities;

5) Courses that each about environmental justice & health equity that include sessions on global climate change; and

6) Courses based in non-public health disciplines (e.g., urban planning, conservation, economic development, Indigenous studies) that are branching out to include the public health and health equity impacts – and implications – of global climate change.

Any other abstracts that are consistent with the theme of the session are also welcome. This session is organized by Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Suzanne Christopher (email: Suzanne@montana.edu) and Lisa Moore (email: lisadee@sfsu.edu) .It will be held during the Tuesday morning 8:30 to 10:00 am APHA time slot (November 5, 2013). 


5) STUDENT POSTER SESSION – APHA 2013

For APHA 2013, THE SPIRIT OF 1848 SOCIAL JUSTICE & PUBLIC HEALTH STUDENT POSTER SESSION is having an open call for abstracts (due Feb 5, 2013) for posters that focus on the links between social justice and public health, including but not limited to posters that address the Spirit of 1848’s theme for 2013: “The Politics of Global Climate Change: Social Justice, Sustainable Economies & Ecologies, and Health Equity.” This theme builds on the official APHA theme for 2013, which is: “Think Global, Act Local: Best Practices Around the World” (141^st annual meeting, Boston, MA, November 2-6, 2013).

We accordingly are seeking abstracts from students of public health and health-related programs, as well as enrolled in programs focused on ecological well-being, including urban planning, environmental sciences, forestry, fishery, and wildlife management, agriculture, meteorology, etc. The abstracts should highlight the intersection between social justice and public health from a historical, theoretical, epidemiological, ethnographic, and/or methodological perspective (whether quantitative or qualitative). 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. The work presented can be global, country-specific, or local.

-- We encourage students at ALL levels of training to submit abstracts, whether undergraduates, master students, MPH students, medical students, or doctoral students; submissions will be judged in accordance to expectations appropriate for each level of training. Postdoctoral fellows are NOT eligible to submit posters.

-- 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, nativity, Indigenous and immigrant status, gender, and sexuality, as well as inequitable relations between nations and geographical regions.

-- Given the theme of this year’s APHA conference, and the decision of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus to focus on the politics of global climate change as they relate to health equity, we encourage abstracts that critically examine global climate change in relation to the social determinants of health in research and practice. In particular, we are interested in submissions that link issues of global climate change with public health, health equity, and social, reproductive, and environmental justice, at the local, national, or global level. We also continue to welcome abstracts that address any aspects of links between social justice and public health, including those not related to global climate change.

--This session will take place at the 141^st annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, in Boston, MA on Tuesday, November 5, 2013 in the 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm APHA time slot.

--Reminder: for this session we are issuing an *open call for abstracts*. All posters for this session will be selected from abstracts submitted in response to this call for abstracts. Please note that if your abstract is accepted we expect you to present your poster at the APHA conference. If you are not able to attend we ask that you find someone to stand in for you so that we can maintain a full program.

-- Abstracts are due on Wednesday, February 5, 2013; all relevant instructions can be found at the APHA abstract submission website; see: http://www.apha.org/meetings/sessions/

For any questions about this session, please contact Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Rebekka Lee (rlee@hsph.harvard.edu), Tabashir Sadegh-Nobari (tabashir@ucla.edu) or Allegra Gordon (argordon@hsph.harvard.edu).


******************************************************************************************************

                                HENCE: the 4 Spirit of 1848 sessions with an OPEN CALL FOR ABSTRACTS are:

• Politics of public health data: global climate change, public health, and health equity
  The objective of our session is to spur critical public health thinking and action regarding data and the public health and health equity impacts of global warming, both in the US and elsewhere.
• Progressive pedagogy: climate change, sustainability and health equity
  This session will critically examine teaching about links between global climate change, sustainable (or non-sustainable) economies and ecologies, and health equity both in and outside of academic settings and across the spectrum of social and economic groups.  Since local action produces global change as well as the reverse, we are particularly interested in pedagogies that promote the critical thinking and actions that transform that binary.
• Resource Inequalities & Health Inequities: Connecting the Local and Global in Historical Analysis, Critique, and Best Practices
  This session seeks papers that will address the local and the global in the context of energy and natural resource inequality and public health challenges from a historical perspective.
• Spirit of 1848 social justice & public health student poster session
  This session welcomes posters submitted by students that focus on the links between social justice and public health, including but not limited to posters that address the Spirit of 1848’s theme for 2013: “The Politics of Global Climate Change: Social Justice, Sustainable Economies & Ecologies, and Health Equity.”

APHA REMINDERS RE ABSTRACT REQUIREMENTS & CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS:

1) APHA ABSTRACT REQUIREMENTS

• Abstracts should be no more than 250 words
• All presenters must be Individual members of APHA in order to present.
• All presenters must register for the meeting.
• Abstracts cannot be presented or published in any journal prior to the APHA Annual Meeting.

2) CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS

• Continuing Education Credit
  APHA values the ability to provide continuing education credit to physicians, nurses, health educators and those certified in public health at its annual meeting. Please complete all required information when submitting an abstract so members can claim credit for attending your session. These credits are necessary for members to keep their licenses and credentials.
  
  For a session to be eligible for Continuing Education Credit, each presenter must provide:
  
  1) an abstract free of trade and/or commercial product names
  
  2) at least one MEASURABLE objective (DO NOT USE understand or to learn as objectives, they are not measureable).
  
  Examples of Acceptable Measurable Action Words:
  Explain, Demonstrate, Analyze, Formulate, Discuss, Compare, Differentiate, Describe, Name, Assess, Evaluate, Identify, Design, Define or List.
  
  3) A signed Conflict of Interest (Disclosure) form with a relevant Qualification Statement. See an example of an acceptable Qualification Statement on the online Disclosure form.
  
  Thank you for your assistance in making your session credit worthy.
  Contact Annette Ferebee at annette.ferebee@apha.org if you have any questions concerning continuing education credit. Contact the program planner for all other questions.

FINALLY:     

If you have any questions about the proposed Spirit of 1848 sessions, please contact session organizers (listed above).

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.spiritof1848.org/

And, if you are interested in subscribing to our email bulletin board, we welcome posting on social justice & public health that provide:     

a) information (e.g. about conferences or job announcements or publications relevant to and making explicit links between social justice & public health), and

b) substantive queries or comments directly addressing issues relevant to and making explicit links between social justice and public health.

If your posting is only about social justice/political issues, or only about public health issues, and does not explicitly connect issues of social justice & public health, please do not post it on this listserv.

Please note that the listserv does not accept attachments. For petitions, please post only the text, accompanied by the explicit instruction not to reply to the listserv but to reply to you directly with signatures.

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SPIRIT OF 1848 MISSION STATEMENT

November 2002

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; it also coordinates the newly established student poster session.

4) History: this committee is in liaison with 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 chair/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 .

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First issued: Fall 1994; revised: November 2001; November 2001; November 2002

************** 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) and Flora Tristan, based in France, publishes her London Journal: A Survey of London Life in the 1830s (1840), a pathbreaking account of the extreme poverty and poor health of its working classes; 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); 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, Sicily, 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 publishes 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"

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, cemeteries, 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

1849-854:         Elizabeth Blackwell sets up the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children (1849); John Snow publishes On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (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)