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As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

This article is entirely about the shortcomings of emergency response, and how the history and traditions of the FDNY and NYPD got in the way of an effective response, resulting in communication barriers, an uncoordinated response, unknown and unaccounted responders, and even possibly avoidable deaths. Public health was not explicitly mentioned, as this article focused more on the efficacy of the multi-agency response itself.

"Hurricane Irene marches north, leaving at least 8 people dead and close to 2 million without power in the states it has already hit. Tonight it bore down on millions more from the Delmarva peninsula to the Jersey Shore and the New York metropolitan area."

"More than a million residents and visitors of the Jersey Shore have been evacuated, though a stubborn 600 people, many of them senior citizens, remain in high rise buildings on a barrier island in Atlantic City, according to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Even before the core of the hurricane reached the area Sunday, Christie said winds could reach up to 75 mph at the upper floors of some of the buildings."

"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops deployed to Long Island, New York City, and the Hudson Valley area to help with the storm. Troops will help staff shelters, control evacuation routes, monitor flood threats at the World Trade Center site and work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to secure railways and train tunnels."

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has issued a prepare-to-deploy order for 6,500 active duty troops from all the services to support hurricane relief efforts if necessary."

The distribution of scarce resources, specifically with healthcare, is a struggle faced by all institutions and how it is acted upon is heavily dependent on the culture and values of the people making the allocations. In France, a relatively wealthy country with a high standard of medical care available, the government has elected to make advanced medical care available to people who would not be able to obtain it in their respective countries of origin by granting them residence rights on a health basis. The article discusses the social factors behind this, the adaptation of the policy over time to meet new demands, and how a balance between ethical and moral obligations, overall public health interests, and equal opportunity of immigrants applying was developed.

The data for this study were collected as part of a larger, population-based, representative study of persons living in the 23 southernmost counties of Mississippi prior to Hurricane Katrina. This is not a new or inventive way of studying this issue, as a representitive study of a population is one of the classic ways social research is conducted.

"Within the last 12 months, there have been multiple "crisis" states declared in Indigenous communities across the country, including even the entire territory of Nunavut—where 84 percent of the population are Inuit. Canadians have begun to ask what exactly is happening, but we should already know."

"What do you find 20 years ago? The same conversations we are having now about suicide. The same
conversations we are having now about the lack of mental health. The same conversations that we are
having around socio economic development,"

I followed up on other environmental concerns relating to US military operations, other water contamination crises (both military and civilian), and i looked more into the history of Camp Lejeune.

Historical research and analysis of primary resourses and international policy was used to produce claims and arguments in this article.

viewpoints pertaining to the legal side of pallative care are not presented in this film. the ideas of medically assisted suicide are very pertinant to palliative and end of life care, but it is not at all discussed in this film.

1. The article cites the previous successes of HIV/AIDS treatment studies that were applied in both Hati, Baltimore, and Boston. 

2. The article describes the conditions of poverty in Rawanda and how the PIH model was applied there. It cites its successes and failures.

3. The article describes possible ways to incorporate structural interventions into medicine and public health practices