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by Stephen H. Gehlbach (Author)
Smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, and polio, fearful diseases that once beset Americans, are now largely, just unhappy history. Yet from our confrontations with these past plagues come lessons that inform today's struggles to understand and remedy problems like HIV/AIDS, coronary heart disease, and Ebola infection. American Plagues weaves stories of encounters with epidemics over our history with lessons that aid our present understanding of health and disease.
Doctors and clergy, writers and newsmen, public health institutions, and even an entire town relate their personal experiences with various outbreaks and the ways they were identified, contained, and treated. The stories are filled with ambition and accomplishment, jealousy and disappointment, public spirit and self-interest, egotism and modesty. Some episodes lead to vital discoveries. Others were unproductive. Yet each proved instructive and expanded our abilities to gather and process information in ways that improve medicine and public health today. American Plagues gives readers insights into some of the people and events that make up our rich public health history as well as skills to better grasp the complex health information that cascades upon us from the media.Author Biography
Stephen H. Gehlbach, MD, MPH, is Dean Emeritus of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He served in the Epidemic Intelligence Service with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) based in Atlanta. A past president of the Council on Education for Public Health, the national accrediting body for academic public health programs in the United States, he chaired numerous site visits to schools of public health across the country. A committed educator throughout his career he currently teaches courses in the fields of epidemiology and preventive medicine including "Clinical Preventive Services" and "Epidemiology and Medical Care." In 2010 he received a Fulbright award to Lebanon where he taught and advised students in a health sciences program. Gehlbach has authored two books related to epidemiology: Interpreting the Medical Literature, and American Plagues: Lessons from Our Battles with Disease. He has also been an active medical researcher with over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has been a core member of a research team conducting an international, cohort study of osteoporosis in women that has followed over 50,000 women in 10 countries for 6 years.
