Elizabeth Fee

Bio: Elizabeth Fee is an academic researcher from National Institutes of Health. The author has contributed to research in topics: Public health & International health. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 154 publications receiving 3325 citations. Previous affiliations of Elizabeth Fee include American Legacy Foundation & Alma College.

The World Health Organization and the Transition From “International” to “Global” Public Health

Abstract: Even a quick glance at the titles of books and articles in recent medical and public health literature suggests that an important transition is underway. The terms ‘global’, ‘globalization’, and their variants are everywhere, and in the specific context of international public health, ‘global’ seems to be emerging as the preferred authoritative term.1 As one indicator, the number of entries under the rubrics ‘global’ and ‘international’ health in PubMed shows that ‘global’ health is rapidly on the rise, seemingly on track to overtake ‘international’ health at some point in 2005 (see Table 5.1). Although universities, government agencies, and private philanthropies are all using the term in highly visible ways, the origin and meaning of the term ‘global health’ are still unclear.2

AIDS : the burdens of history

Abstract: The AIDS epidemic has posed more urgent historical questions than any other disease of modern times. How have societies responded to epidemics in the past? Why did the disease emerge when and where it did? How has it spread among members of particular groups? And how will the past affect the future - in particular, what does the history of medical science and public health tell us about our ability to control the epidemic and eventually to cure the disease? Historical methods of inquiry change, and people who use these methods often disagree on theory and practice. Indeed, the contributors to this volume hold a variety of opinions on controversial historiographic issues. But they share three important principles: cautious adherence to the 'social constructionist' view of past and present; profound skepticism about historicism's idea of progress; and wariness about 'presentism', the distortion of the past by seeing it only from the point of view of the present. Each of the twelve essays addresses an aspect of the burdens of history during the AIDS epidemic. By 'burdens' is meant the inescapable significance of events in the past for the present. All of these events are related in some way to the current epidemic and can help clarify the complex social and cultural responses to the crisis of AIDS. This collection illuminates present concerns directly and forcefully without sacrificing attention to historical detail and to the differences between past and present situations. It reminds us that many of the issues now being debated - quarantine, exclusion, public needs and private rights - have their parallels in the past. This will be an important book for social historians and general readers as well as for historians of medicine.

Social Movements in Health

Abstract: Most public health practitioners know that public health has relied on biomedical advances and administrative improvements, but it is less commonly understood that social movements in health have also been sources of motivation for population health advances. This review considers the impacts of social movements focused on urban conditions and health, on the health of children, and on behavioral and substance-related determinants of health and illustrates how these movements have significantly influenced public health activities and programs. We hope this review will motivate public health workers to make common cause with social activists and to encourage social activists to ally with public health professionals.

Rudolf Carl Virchow: medical scientist, social reformer, role model.

Abstract: GENERALLY REGARDED AS one of the most brilliant and influential biomedical scientists of the 19th century, Rudolf Carl Virchow was, remarkably, also one of the most courageous and inspiring proponents of social medicine.1 He was born on October 13, 1821, in Schivelbein, Pomerania, then in eastern Prussia, but since 1945, part of northwestern Poland. Rebellious and intellectually gifted, in 1839 Virchow won a scholarship in 1839 to the Friedrich-Wilhelms Institut in Berlin, Germany, where he received his medical education.2 After obtaining his MD in 1843, he was appointed to an internship at Berlin’s Charite Hospital where he began his clinical career. He also initiated chemical and microscopic research, which led to his first publications and bold proclamations of the need for a drastic overhaul of medical research. In 1847, the 26-year-old Virchow co-founded a new journal, Archives for Pathological Anatomy and Physiology and Clinical Medicine (later Virchow’s Archives), which became a major force in the modernization of medical science. In 1849 he left Berlin for Wurzburg to accept Germany’s first chair in pathological anatomy. Soon after launching a comprehensive, 6-volume Handbook on Special Pathology and Therapeutics in 1854, Virchow returned to Berlin to head a new pathological institute and in 1858 published his classic Cellular Pathology. In the 1870s, while remaining a prolific biomedical scientist, Virchow also turned his attention increasingly to anthropology and archaeology. He died on September 5, 1902, much honored worldwide as one of the towering scientists of his era. Virchow’s career in social medicine was equally remarkable. His most famous contribution was his “Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia” excerpted here. The report originated when Virchow was asked by the Minister of Education to help investigate scandalous conditions in this poor rural area under Prussian control, with a large population of “ethnic Poles.” Although he studied many dimensions of the epidemic, his 190-page report is best remembered for its final 30 pages.3,4 Here Virchow applied ideas on the social causation of disease, derived from French and English sources, to conditions in Silesia and showed a close and sympathetic familiarity with Friedrich Engels’ stirring indictment, Condition of the Working Class in England (1844). Caught up in the heady atmosphere of his revolutionary times, Virchow enthusiastically endorsed what he proudly labeled “radical” political recommendations: introduction of Polish as an official language, democratic self-government, separation of church and state, and the creation of grassroots agricultural cooperatives. After returning to Berlin in March 1848 to participate in “revolutionary” political action on the streets, in July, Virchow helped found Medical Reform, a weekly newspaper that promoted the cause of social medicine under the banners “medicine is a social science” and “the physician is the natural attorney of the poor.” He continued until June 1849, when increasingly reactionary political pressures forced him to suspend publication. He became politically quiet in the early 1850s (as did many European radicals). When he returned to Berlin later in the decade, he again became active, although now in more moderate ways. In 1859 he was appointed to Berlin’s City Council, a position he held until his death, and there worked on sanitary and other public health reforms.5 In 1861 he helped found the German Progressive Party and was elected to the Prussian diet as a leader of the constitutional forces opposed to Otto von Bismarck. Virchow later continued that fight as a member of the German Reichstag from 1880 to 1893. Virchow’s dual career has been widely inspirational. He is often credited for being one of the first to make the case for the social origins of illness and the multifactorial etiology of epidemics.6,7 But beyond that he has also served as a powerful icon, hero, and role model because he was both a leading scientist and an insistent proponent of the social grounding of medicine, public health reform, and political engagement.8,9

Detecting Novel Associations in Large Data Sets

Abstract: Identifying interesting relationships between pairs of variables in large data sets is increasingly important. Here, we present a measure of dependence for two-variable relationships: the maximal information coefficient (MIC). MIC captures a wide range of associations both functional and not, and for functional relationships provides a score that roughly equals the coefficient of determination (R2) of the data relative to the regression function. MIC belongs to a larger class of maximal information-based nonparametric exploration (MINE) statistics for identifying and classifying relationships. We apply MIC and MINE to data sets in global health, gene expression, major-league baseball, and the human gut microbiota and identify known and novel relationships.

A Global Perspective: Reframing the History of Health, Medicine, and Disease.

Abstract: The emergence of global history has been one of the more notable features of academic history over the past three decades. Although historians of disease were among the pioneers of one of its earlier incarnations—world history—the recent “global turn” has made relatively little impact on histories of health, disease, and medicine. Most continue to be framed by familiar entities such as the colony or nation-state or are confined to particular medical “traditions.” This article aims to show what can be gained from taking a broader perspective. Its purpose is not to replace other ways of seeing or to write a new “grand narrative” but to show how transnational and transimperial approaches are vital to understanding some of the key issues with which historians of health, disease, and medicine are concerned. Moving on from an analysis of earlier periods of integration, the article offers some reflections on our own era of globalization and on the emerging field of global health.