Pandemics and Public Health Crises in United States History

FAIN: EH-301253-24

Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)
Marian Moser Jones (Project Director: February 2024 to present)
James Harris (Co Project Director: July 2024 to present)

A two-week combined-format institute for 30 higher education faculty to study disease, public health, and U.S. history from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries.

The proposed Institute, “Pandemics and Public Health Crises in United States History,” will train 30 educators in the humanities and health sciences to teach interdisciplinary courses on the history of disease and other public health crises, by immersing them in gripping historical case studies and by demonstrating innovative teaching methods by expert faculty. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for nuanced, critical, and multidisciplinary thinking about public health in the U.S. COVID-19 and the threat of infectious diseases are far from the only ongoing public health crises: others include stark disparities in chronic disease rates, surges in mental illness, and health consequences of climate change. Studying and teaching these crises with a humanist and historical perspective enables students and instructors to grasp the roots and layered social contexts in which they are embedded and to thoughtfully contribute to efforts to address them.