Public Health in the Caribbean and Latin America: A past perspective

University of York, 18-20 July 2014

Diffusionist models of understanding the histories of medicine and health practices in non-European countries have increasingly been discredited. Instead, scholars now highlight the multi-directional movement of ideas and practices between Europe and other parts of the world, as well as the mutually-constitutive character of imperialism, post-colonial ideologies and development projects. Yet, several gaps remain in the historiography. Relatively scant attention has been paid to the production of medical and scientific practices in Caribbean and Latin American contexts, and how the underpinning knowledge was used to reshape the design and implementation of medical, scientific and public health work; this dynamism in Latin America and the Caribbean also had a far-reaching impact on imperial powers such as Portugal, the US, France and, not least, Britain. This two-day workshop, centred around pre-circulated papers, tries to fill the gap in the scholarship by examining some of the unique public health policies that emerged in the Caribbean and Latin America and which were deeply wedded to local conditions and influenced by negotiations between indigenous elites and the groups they sought to control. The workshop also seeks to better understand the ways in which models of public health organisation and practices were exported wider afield, either through trans-imperial networks or post-Second World War developmental strategies.

The workshop focusses on four themes:

  • The control of tuberculosis
  • Questions of infant and maternal health
  • Primary health care, broadly defined
  • The use of the Caribbean and Latin America as a laboratory

And it engages with one or more of the following questions:

  • The identification of tuberculosis as a public health problem and the measures intended to combat the disease
  • How TB control efforts were imagined, variously, as a national, regional and international problem
  • How international and multilateral agencies, such as the WHO and UNICEF, got involved in TB control efforts
  • Why was the issue of infant and maternal health advocated as being of national, regional and international significance?
  • What were the core components of infant and maternal healthcare services in different imperial and national contexts?
  • How were experiments with social medicine interconnected with a rise in ideologies relating to the need for social security nets and universal health care?
  • How were concepts of universal healthcare incorporated into political systems, both imperial and national?
  • What roles did international health organisations play in advocating the need for primary health care?
  • How were experiments in primary healthcare in Latin America and the Caribbean exported wider afield?
  • What efforts were made by global funding agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to reshape structures of primary healthcare?
  • How did external pressures, from funding agencies and new political alliances, cause an expansion of public-private partnerships in health-care delivery, and to what effect?

The conference is being held in the York Medical Society in the city centre of York. For directions, see

The preliminary conference programme is laid out on the following pages.

Friday 18 July 2014 – York Medical Society, 23 Stonegate.

1:00- 1:15: registration

1:15 -1:45: Lunch

1:45-2:00: Welcome and introductions

2:00- 3:00: Primary Health Care I (Magali Sa)

  1. Margaret Jones, ‘”Who pays for the sick poor?”: Poor relief and medical aid in colonial Jamaica, 1886-1940’.
  2. Beatrix Carillo Campos, ‘Chile and the USPSHS: Understanding US-Chilean relations through public health’

3:00-3:30 Coffee break

3:30-4:30Tuberculosis control I (Henrice Altink)

  1. Pedro Welch, ‘Battling the Scourges: Public Health Provision in Barbados, 1900-1950’.
  2. Debbie McCollin, Masson’s legacy: The development of TB treatment in Trinidad and Tobago, 1905-1962.

4:30-5:15 break

5:15-6:15 – Professor Jamie Benchemol, ‘Stories from the history of health and science: a sinuous tale composed against a backdrop of football and samba’

6:15-7:00 – Wine reception sponsored by the history department

7:30- Dinner atMelton’s Too, 25 Walmgate.

Saturday 19 July, York Medical Society, 23 Stonegate.

9:30-10:00 – Registration and coffee

10:00- 11:00:The Caribbean and Latin America as a Laboratory (Sabine Clarke)

  1. Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, ‘How the Puerto Rican hookworm campaign reshaped the relationship between medicine and race in the US South and beyond’.
  2. Daniele Cozzoli,‘Research on Curare in the 20th Century and the scientific collaboration between Italy and South America’.

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-12:30: Primary Health Care II (SanjoyBhattarchaya)

  1. Ana Carolina de CarvalhoViotti, ‘The development of health care in the tropics: Notes on the exchanged letters between Brazil and Portugal during the colonial period’.
  2. Tara Innis, ‘A perfect storm: public health and infectious disease in Barbados, 1900-1930’.

12:30-1:15 Lunch

1:15-2:15: Teaching the history of the production of medical and scientific practices in Caribbean and Latin Americancontext. A roundtable discussion led by Henrice Altink and Magali Romero Sa.

2:15-3:15: Maternal and Child Welfare (Margaret Jones)

  1. Diego Luza Fernandez, ‘Scientific debates, public policy and social movements at the origin of the Vaso de Leche program in Lima, Peru (1980-1994).
  2. Julianne Weis, ‘Cecily Williams, the WHO, and the first decades in the globalisation of maternal and child health, 1948-1960’.

3:15-3:45 Coffee break

3:45- 4:45: Tuberculosis II (Magali Romero Sa)

  1. Henrice Altink, ‘”Fight TB with BCG”: Mass vaccination campaigns in the British Caribbean, 1951-56
  2. Jhon Carmona, ‘Tuberculosis control in Peru: a bad export?’

4:45-5:00 Conclusions.