FOCUS: HEALTH *EQUITY* IN ALL POLICIES
Our Spirit of 1848 call for abstracts for the 143rd annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA; Chicago, IL, Oct 31-Nov 4, 2015) builds on the theme for the conference, which is “Health in All Policies.” We intend to push the bounds by expanding the focus of our sessions to be “Health EQUITY in All policies”! – and we invite you to contribute critical proposals for presentations that will advance work on promoting health equity, including via progressive policies that links issues of social justice and public health.
Hence: our 2015 call for abstracts, continuing our critical tradition of linking politics, passion, and public health.
*** NOTE: ALL ABSTRACTS ARE DUE ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2015 ***
We list our sessions in the chronological order in which they will be presented at the APHA meeting, as follows:
1) SOCIAL HISTORY OF PUBLIC HEALTH SESSION -- APHA 2015
Session title: CRITICAL HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES OF HEALTH EQUITY IN ALL POLICIES: LOCAL EXPERIENCES AND GLOBAL AMBITIONS
The Social History of Public Health Committee of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus has an *OPEN* call for abstracts for a session examining specific historical experiences that reflect the conference theme, "health in all policies" or even better: "health equity in all policies."
Reformers who have strived for social justice in health across different contexts have realized that without the transformation of the social, economic and political environment, very little could be achieved in improving the public's health. Many historical examples of successes at the local, regional, and national levels support the value of taking this broad perspective, while other counterexamples demonstrate the limits and failures of health efforts that have neglected larger factors influencing the public's health.
-- Suggestions of successful historical examples include the experience of India's Kerala state, the case of China in the 1950s-1970s, and others that have entailed integrated intersectoral policy approaches, dealing with social, political, and economic determination of population health.
-- The experience of Chicago may be an example of failure, in which deteriorating health conditions can best be understood within the context of urban decay and broader policy failures in education, housing, and other sectors.
-- Other case studies from the U.S. or other countries are also welcome. Historical studies of initiatives at the international scale, such as the Alma-Ata Declaration, with its emphasis on economic and social development as a necessary condition for health for all, will also be considered.
Note: abstracts for this session will include both contributed and solicited abstracts, as warranted.
The session will be held on the Monday morning of the APHA conference (Nov 2, 2015, in the 10:30am -12:00pm time slot). It is being co-organized by Anne-Emanuelle Birn (e-mail:ae.birn@utoronto.ca), Marian Moser Jones (e-mail: moserj@umd.edu), Jake Coffey (e-mail: jcoffey@uams.edu), and Luis A. Avilés (e-mail: luis.aviles3@upr.edu).
2) POLITICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH DATA SESSION -- APHA 2015
Session title: POLITICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH DATA: EMPIRICAL RESEARCH TO INFORM HEALTH ‘EQUITY’ IN ALL POLICIES, FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL LEVELS
The politics of public health data session welcomes – in an *OPEN CALL* -- abstracts that use empirical research (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods) to examine the overall all theme of the APHA meeting, Health in All Policies, but with an important variation: Health EQUITY in All Policies.
Possible topics include:
(i) the formulation of & negotiations about the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);
(ii) the US federal & state-by-state roll-out and expansion (or not) of the Affordable Care Act;
(iii) health impact assessment in relation to mass incarceration & decriminalization of nonviolent offenses, or in relation to community health risk assessment; and
(iv) health equity in relation to housing, labor, or other ‘non-health’ policies.
We welcome submissions on other topics as well, as long as they pertain to the issue of the politics of public health data in relation to health equity & policy.
The session will have an open call for abstracts, with an option to solicit abstracts as well.
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 2, 2015).
If you have any questions, please contact the session organizers, who are Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Catherine Cubbin (email: ccubbin@austin.utexas.edu), Zinzi Bailey (email: zinzib@gmail.com), and Nancy Krieger (email: nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu).
3) PROGRESSIVE PEDAGOGY SESSION -- APHA 2015
Session title: PROGRESSIVE PEDAGOGY: HEALTH EQUITY IN ALL POLICIES
We invite – with an open call for abstracts – presentations that critically examine teaching about the intersection of health equity and policies. This includes public health and healthcare policies as well as policies whose primary focus is not health (e.g., policies involving economics, energy, environment, agriculture, housing, transportation, education, the legal system, etc).
Abstracts on teaching both in and outside of academic settings, including trainings within public health agencies, other agencies that implement policies, and also oriented to policymakers, as well as across the spectrum of social and economic groups, are encouraged.
Some possible topic might include:
a) Trainings that critically teach about promoting health equity through policy change, including but not limited to public health policy
b) Courses based in non-public health disciplines (e.g., urban planning, social work, mental health, sociology, economics, law) that are branching out to include health impacts – and implications – of policies, with attention to health equity.
c) Teaching about how healthcare policies address (or fail to address) health equity
d) Teaching about conducting health equity impact assessments
e) Introductory courses that teach about the concepts of “Health in All Policies,” approaches to its implementation (e.g., involving intersectoral work, shared health governance, “joined-up” policies), and how to build in goals regarding health equity
We welcome any other abstracts that are consistent with the theme of the session.
This session is organized by Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Lisa Moore (email: lisadee@sfsu.edu), Vanessa Simonds (email: vanessa.simonds@montana.edu), and Bekka Lee (email: rlee@hsph.harvard.edu). It will be held during the Tuesday morning 8:30 to 10:00 am APHA time slot (November 3, 2015).
4) INTEGRATIVE SESSION -- APHA 2015
Session title: CRITICAL WORK ON HEALTH EQUITY IN ALL POLICIES – HISTORY, DATA, PEDAGOGY, AND ACTION
This session focuses on one topic from the perspective of the 3 foci of our Spirit of 1848 caucus: social history of public health, politics of public health data, and progressive pedagogy.
Thus, for 2015, the session will focus on: “Critical work on health equity in all policies – history, data, pedagogy, and action.” Its 3 presentations will address:
1) the radical history of the idea of health equity in all policies, from a global perspective;
2) the politics of public health data as they play out in advancing and evaluating health equity in all policies, from the standpoint of a progressive public health agency seeking to implement such policies; and
3) progressive pedagogy about health equity in all policies, from the vantage of a course that engages students in community-driven partnerships that implement this approach.
All abstracts for this session will be solicited; no contributed abstracts will be accepted.
The session will be organized by Nancy Krieger (email: nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu), and will take place on the Tuesday morning of APHA, in the 10:30 am to 12 noon slot (November 3, 2015).
5) STUDENT POSTER SESSION – APHA 2015
For APHA 2015, The Spirit of 1848 Social Justice & Public Health Student Poster Session is having an *OPEN CALL FOR ABSTRACTS* for posters that highlight the intersection between social justice and public health from a historical, theoretical, epidemiological, ethnographic, and/or methodological perspective (whether quantitative or qualitative). Abstracts are due on Thurs, Feb 12, 2015.
We welcome abstracts on any and all work that focuses on connections between social justice & public health. Topics can range from public health research to public health practice to student-initiated courses on connections between social justice & public health. Given the theme of this year’s APHA meeting (“Health in All Policies”), we especially encourage abstracts that critically examine the importance of health equity in all policies. This can include but is not limited to abstracts focusing on environmental, housing, criminal justice, health care, or food systems policies, on financial and/or labor legislation, and on the power imbalances involved in the development of these policies. Your abstract, however, does NOT have to focus on “health equity in all policies” – any topic is fine as long as it links issues of social justice & public health.
We welcome abstracts from both students of public health and health related programs, as well as students enrolled in non-health-specific disciplines such as urban planning, sociology, economics, public policy, political science and law. The work presented can be global, country-specific, or local.
-- We encourage students at ALL levels of training to submit abstracts, whether undergraduates, MPH or other master students, medical or nursing 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.
--This session will take place at the 143rd annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, in Chicago, IL on Tuesday, November 3, 2015 in the 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm APHA time slot.
-- Please note that if your abstract is accepted we expect you to present your poster at the APHA conference. We understand that emergencies may occur; however, if you are not able to attend we ask that you find someone to present or stand with your poster so that we can maintain a full program. We are requesting this commitment out of fairness to other students submitting abstracts – because any slot that turns into a “no show” could have been a slot in which another student could have presented.
-- Abstracts are due on Thurs, February 12, 2015; all relevant instructions can be found at the APHA abstract submission website; see: https://apha.confex.com/apha/143am/oasys.epl
For any questions about this session, please contact Spirit of 1848 Coordinating Committee members Allegra Gordon (argordon@mail.harvard.edu), Nylca Muñoz (nylca.munoz@upr.edu) or Tabashir Sadegh-Nobari (tabashir@ucla.edu).
**********************************************************************************1) APHA Abstract Requirements
2) Continuing Education Credits
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.
Community email addresses:
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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 (Die Medizinische 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
Seneca Nation of Indians makes and adopts its Constitution for elected government
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); 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)
Ready?
Nancy Krieger, PhD
Dept of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Harvard School of Public Health
677 Huntington Avenue, Kresge 717
Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617-432-1571
Fax: 617-432-3123
nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu