CfP: AHA 2020 panel on public health

We are seeking two more papers, or one paper and one commentator, for a proposed AHA 2020 panel that will explore how crises beyond the medical realm can generate or hasten advances in public health. While this theme should unify the papers, engaging different forms of “crisis,” “innovations,” and “public health” could lead to a fruitful conversation.

In her paper “Smallpox in Colonial America: the most terrible of all the ministers of death,” Ann M. Becker demonstrates that the introduction of mass troop inoculation within the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War finally enabled the acceptance of smallpox inoculation. Rebecca R. Noel’s paper, “Manufactured Crisis, Manufactured Health: Common School Reformers and the Case for Schooling the Body,” argues that school health initiatives by common school reformers of the 1830s rested on a perceived crisis among children and young adults of the quickly emerging middle class.

Additional papers could remain in the colonial and early American republic field or stretch the borders of time and place. Send inquiry by February 10 or complete abstract (up to 300 words) and short biography (up to 250 words) by February 11 to Ann Becker, annbecker@optimum.net, and Rebecca Noel, rrnoel@plymouth.edu. As full panel proposals are due February 15, accepted panelists should be available by email during the week.