Henry Yu

This thesis examines the development of American public health institutions and public health policy during the Progressive Era through the interplay of the twin issues of anti-epidemic disease policy and immigration and rethinks the relationship between race, migration, policy, and public health. It investigates three disease epidemics that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which migrants figured prominently: the 1892 cholera outbreak in New York City, the 1900 plague epidemic in San Francisco, and the typhoid fever outbreaks started by the woman who came to be known as Typhoid Mary. Through these three case studies, this thesis argues that though American public health institutions greatly expanded their reach in this period as the central state took on the primary responsibility for protecting the nation’s health, these institutions remained shakier and more vulnerable to challenges than the secondary literature has appreciated. I demonstrate this trend by studying the perspectives of both the pub-lic health officials implementing anti-epidemic policies and the migrants caught up in these poli-cies, highlighting the roles played by challengers to public health policy. These “resisters,” as I term them, were a broad group of disparate individuals ranging from the political and racial elite, to racially and politically marginalized migrants; their resistance constrained public health offi-cials’ actions and the range of policy tools wielded by public health agencies. Finally, in light of this pattern, this thesis draws a comparison between public health in the Progressive era and the Covid-19 pandemic in twenty-first century America. I suggest that the vulnerabilities in the pub-lic health system exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic are part of a much longer history, and arose in part because America’s system of public health sits atop institutional foundations that were never particularly sturdy even at the time they were built.

View record

This thesis demonstrates the significance of the Chinese market gardens that once populated the Musqueam reserve, underscoring the respectful and reciprocal relationships that were formed historically. Through reflecting upon the collaborative processes by which stories about this history were recovered and recorded, this thesis also explains how the values that animated the relations between Chinese farmers and their Musqueam hosts served as an inspiration for the process of revitalizing these stories in the present. By recounting my involvement in developing collaborative educational initiatives on the unceded lands of the Musqueam people, I hope to provide my own limited insights into some of the core principles that any collaborator and researcher must learn, and some of the pre-conceptions they must unlearn, if they are going to make the serious commitment to ethically and respectfully collaborate with Indigenous knowledge keepers. Through experiences that challenged me to deepen my understanding of my roles and responsibilities as a visitor to these lands, and as a student and staff member working at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the reader can perhaps learn from my path rather than make common mistakes that outsiders often inflict upon Indigenous communities. The creation of educational resources involved non-Musqueam individuals working in collaboration with members of the community in order to identify needs and bring together the necessary resources. Such partnerships require constant care and a willingness to reflect continually upon how decisions are made, and how consensus is maintained through iterative and repeated consultations throughout the process from beginning to end. I conclude that collaborative knowledge making in general, and in particular with Indigenous communities, involves a) a considerable amount of time devoted to create and foster long term relationships; b) a genuine commitment to develop a connection to the territory and language of the community; c) a humble and respectful openness to recognizing misconceptions that need to be unlearned and work practices that need to be changed; and d) an attention to how reciprocal relations are needed both to identify and to create meaningful ways to give back to the community.

View record

In the 1920s, Philippine infant mortality campaigns called into question Filipino women’s capacity to care as both mothers and nurses. Therefore the campaign required a two-step process of first remodeling elite Filipino women as nurses who would then transfer their knowledge to mothers. In order to address the needs of the people, nurse education needed to be remodeled. Therefore, the colonial government partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) to remodel Philippine nursing through an experimental system that emphasized university training and specialization in public health. Even though the Foundation wanted to prove the universality of this system it was inevitably hampered by local conditions in the Philippines. It would take two decades for a university nurse training system to finally take shape. Although it took years for the university system to be established offshoots of the original program did take root, particularly the RF fellowship program that sponsored Filipino nurses to temporarily migrate to the U.S. to study abroad.By examining a variety of sources, including RF records, letters, newspapers, dissertations and conference transcripts, this paper considers the role Filipino student nurses played in infant mortality campaigns. Filipino nurses sought U.S. training, in order to have their medical authority recognized, but in seeking recognition within a system that saw Filipino nurses as inherently inferior due to their race, gender, and profession meant that their authority would perpetually be called into question. For Filipino nurses that took part in the colonial medical project they occupied a liminal space that both simultaneously validated and invalidated their knowledge. The dilemma of recognition was an issue that all Filipino migrants in the U.S. faced which created a constant state of surveillance within the community abroad. While some crumbled under the pressure of constant policing other Filipinos used it challenge the U.S. colonial project. At infant mortality health conferences, Filipino medical practitioners asserted their own medical authority. Even though these conferences were the same sites where both colonial and native medical practitioners invalidated nurse knowledge, nurses used it to legitimize native authority and the medical authority of women.

View record