Applied Medical History
This working group explores the application of medical history in clinical medicine, health education, medical science, health policy, and global/public health. It aims to create a transdisciplinary conversation that focuses on active engagement. By bringing together scholars, learners, archivists, healthcare professionals, and activists, the working group strengthens existing connections and creates networks committed to translating insights from the history of medicine and health into tangible interventions addressing pressing medical and societal challenges. Recent historical events have provided a new urgency to not only expose historically entrenched structures of health-related disparities, discrimination, and systemic harm, but to work actively towards their dismantling. Building on a long history of engaged scholarship in the history of medicine, the group provides a space for new ways of thinking about medical history as an applied discipline.
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Consortium Respectful Behavior Policy
Participants at Consortium activities will treat each other with respect and consideration to create a collegial, inclusive, and professional environment that is free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.
Participants will avoid any inappropriate actions or statements based on individual characteristics such as age, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, or any other characteristic protected by law. Disruptive or harassing behavior of any kind will not be tolerated. Harassment includes but is not limited to inappropriate or intimidating behavior and language, unwelcome jokes or comments, unwanted touching or attention, offensive images, photography without permission, and stalking.
Participants may send reports or concerns about violations of this policy to conduct@chstm.org.
Upcoming Meetings
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Friday, May 17, 2024 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm EDT
Eugenics and Its Afterlives: The Afterlives of Eugenics Collective at Yale University
Confirmed Presenters:
Dan HoSang
Past Meetings
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April 19, 2024
How to Make a Humanities Lab
What is a humanities laboratory? Why are they useful? And what goes into starting and running one? For this session, Professor Natalie Lira is returning to our working group to discuss logistics, strategies, and practical concerns that come with running a historically oriented laboratory in a university. Specifically, she will share valuable insights from her time as Co-Director of the Sterlization and Social Justice Lab based at the University of California Los Angeles. This workshop would provide an opportunity for us to discuss how to start and run a humanities lab, from funding and lab space to the ins and outs of lab management.
Confirmed Presenters
Natalie Lira (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
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March 15, 2024
Lancet Commission on Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust: Implications for Today, Teaching for Tomorrow
This session will discuss a recent report and associated work by the Lancet Commission on Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust--a group of historians and other scholars dedicated to incorporating the history of medicine under Nazism and the Holocaust into the education of health care students and professionals today. Presenters will introduce the Commission, its work, and the findings of its report. You can take a look at the following to see some of the Commission's recent publications in The Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/medicine-and-the-holocaust
Confirmed Presenters:
Sari J. Siegel
Matthew Wynia
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February 16, 2024
How To Do History as a Clinician, PART 2: Identifying Barriers and Imagining Solutions
Are you interested in a medical career but also have a love for historical research? There are many possible training and career paths for clinicians who also do historical research and teach medical history. This session will build on our initial discussion from the Fall to identify barriers and obstacles to doing history as a clinician and imagining solutions. The first half will involve open discussion among participants about the challenges to doing history as a clinician at various levels of training, from undergraduate and medical school to residency and early career. The second half will feature panelists who will identify organizations attempting to address those challenges. The goal is to identify concrete steps to make history and clinical work more accessible.
Panelists: Nora O’Neill, Jonathan Kuo
Note: You do NOT need to have attended Part 1 to attend Part 2.
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January 19, 2024
“Pharmaceutical Captivity, Epistemological Rupture, and the Business Archive of the British Slave Trade” with Prof Carolyn Roberts
For our first session of the new year, we will be reading and discussing Professor Carolyn Roberts’ excellent new article “Pharmaceutical Captivity, Epistemological Rupture, and the Business Archive of the British Slave Trade” published in Business History Review. Professor Roberts will be joined by two respondents: historian-activist Kenya Loudd, who studies race and disability, and Dr. Amanda Calhoun, a psychiatrist, researcher, and advocate. After their comments, we will open up for question and answer with Prof Roberts and respondents. The article is attached here. We hope to see you there!
Author: Carolyn Roberts
Respondents: Kenya Loudd, Amanda Calhoun
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November 17, 2023
Sterilization and Social Justice Lab
In this session we will hear from members of the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab about their work to use history of eugenics and sertilization in the U.S. to uncover and help redress past abuses. They have circulated two articles for optional reading ahead of their presentation (see below).
Confirmed Panelists: Natalie Lira, PhD and Marie Kaniecki, MPH
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October 20, 2023
How to Do History as a Clinician: A Panel Featuring Current Medical Students and Early Career Clinicians
Are you interested in a medical career but also have a love for historical research? There are many possible training and career paths for clinicians who also do historical research and teach medical history. The panel will consist of current students as well as early career clinicians who took different paths to becoming clinician historians. We'll discuss combined training programs, including MD/PhD and MA programs and more.
Panelists: Nora O'Neill, Joshua Glahn, Leigh Alon, Lisa Haushofer
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May 19, 2023
Group Discussion: Processing and Planning for Next Year
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April 21, 2023
Podcasting Applied Medical History
This session brings together scholars who have succeeded in creating broader conversations about the history of medicine and the social, racial, and economic determinants of health through the medium of podcasting.
Confirmed Panelists:
Matthew Smith (University of Strathclyde): Producer/Host, "History in Action" Podcast
Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA): Producer/Host, "Flip the Script" Podcast
Jacqueline Wolf (Ohio University): Producer/Host "Lifespan: Stories of Illness, Accident and Recovery" Podcast
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March 17, 2023
Teaching Under Adversity
This session will explore the challenges of teaching critical topics in the history of medicine in unreceptive, unsupportive, or unfriendly contexts, and the ways people have tried to navigate these challenges.
Confirmed panelists:
Adam Biggs (Rutgers University; University of South Carolina Lancaster)
Joseph Gabriel (Florida State University)
Courtney Thompson (Mississippi State University)
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February 17, 2023
Community History without Historians: a New Haven Case Study
Group Conveners
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Lisa Haushofer
Lisa Haushofer, MD PhD, is a medical doctor and a historian of food, science, and medicine. She is currently Senior Research Associate at the Chair for the History of Medicine and the Center for Medical Humanities at the University of Zurich. She holds an MD from Witten-Herdecke University, an MA from University College London, and a PhD from Harvard University. Her first book, Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition was published with California University Press in December 2022.
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Kirsten Moore-Sheeley
Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She received her PhD in the History of Medicine in 2018 from Johns Hopkins University along with a Certificate in Global Health from the JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has published some of her research in Social History of Medicine is currently completing her first book, Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects, under contract with JHU Press.
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Marco Ramos
Marco Ramos, MD PhD, is a Psychiatry Resident and Lecturer in the History of Medicine at Yale University. His historical research focuses on mental health, activism, and revolutionary politics in Latin America. His writing has appeared in clinical, academic, and popular journals, including The American Historical Review, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, and Boston Review. He is currently working on turning his dissertation into a book, tentatively titled Specters of Justice: Mental Health and Terror in Cold War Argentina. He will start as Assistant Professor in the Program for the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University in July 2022.
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Carolyn Roberts
Carolyn Roberts, PhD, is a historian of medicine and science at Yale University. She holds a joint appointment in the departments of History/History of Science and Medicine, and African American Studies. Dr. Roberts also holds a secondary appointment at Yale School of Medicine in the Program in the History of Medicine. Her research interests concern the history of race, science, and medicine in the context of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Dr. Roberts is currently working on a book manuscript, To Heal and To Harm: Medicine, Healthcare, and Slave Trading in the British Atlantic World, which is under contract with Harvard University Press. She is also a popular workshop leader and speaker who brings critical historical perspectives to anti-racism interventions in science, medicine, and public health. Dr. Roberts has contributed to institutional efforts to diversify STEM, including anti-racist pedagogy and curricula with a variety of corporations, non-profit organizations, and institutions.
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