Prospectus Draft
For my final project, the general topic I want to explore is the American polio epidemics of 1916 and beyond. Since this was a widespread disease that impacted the daily lives for everyone, it bears resemblance to Covid, and I want to compare the two diseases. This topic personally matters to me because I’m interested in studying diseases and learning about the ways we are able to treat, cure, and eradicate them. Since the polio epidemics had a huge impact on American society, I want to learn about those ways that society as a whole was affected, and how treatment/vaccines were implemented to quickly treat the disease. I’m interested in exploring questions, such as: How did polio impact American society? How were polio vaccinations promoted, and how is it different from covid vaccinations? How did opinions about the polio vaccination compare to covid vaccination opinions? This prospectus will discuss how I plan to explore these questions, my roadmap for the project, and how I will analyze my argument for my intended audience.
In beginning to explore the questions I asked, I looked at our class course reader to see if I could make connections between my topic and what we learned in class. I picked two sources:
-Abernathy, “Befriend someone you disagree with” in Washington Post, May 23, 2021.
-Jeste, [Excerpts on] Cognitive Biases in Wiser, 2020.
One of the topics we discussed was the idea of bias and how pre-existing biases can influence our opinions and decisions, related to the Wiser excerpt. The Abernathy article reminded me of the polarization of bias, since it talked about how America is divided between political parties. I know that especially with Covid, there was a highly polarized attitude towards vaccinations. There was a bias towards the polio vaccine in the 1950s as well. These two articles can lead me to examine what biases were prevalent in society that potentially influenced how the American public viewed the polio vaccine.
For the roadmap of my final project, I will begin with an introduction that gives the reader background information on polio, how it rose and spread in the US, and impact with deaths. Then, I will lead into discussing the 1912 outbreak, and events such as school closure, education impacts, and city quarantines from the Meyers study. I will compare this to the covid school closures. My next paragraph will discuss organization-level responses, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to champion polio research and raise awareness for disabilities through the creation of organizations such as the NFIP and March for Dimes using the Dorfman source. I will also mention the creation of polio committees and their efforts to treat polio from the Laurel Iverson source, and then compare the polio response to covid response organizations. The next paragraph is the development of the polio vaccine. From my background research, key ideas will talk about the two types of polio vaccines and the Cutter incident. The purpose of this paragraph is to provide background information on these vaccines and events. After that, I will analyze how these efforts promoted vaccination to the public. The Stephen E. Mawdsley source talks about how the NFIP recruited teenagers to promote vaccines. Some other sources such as Yeracaris also talk about the demographics of people who were vaccinated, which I plan to use. More research is needed on these topics. Finally, the last paragraph will analyze the differences in approaches and attitudes between polio and covid. I want to mention points such as how parents were more likely to vaccinate children against polio versus covid, because covid is more targeted towards the elderly. I also want to see if anything from the polio epidemic was applied to the covid response, or should have been applied, or could be applied.
Throughout my project, I will be using analytical lenses to deepen and expand my argument–most likely the historical and case study lenses to present to my audience. By studying the historical background of my topic and connecting it to the present-day, I can add layers to my argument. I have found a few sources that cover case studies of my topic, so I can also use those sources to draw conclusions. Even though my topic is both historical and public health related, it leans more heavily towards the side of historical analysis, so my intended audience is for historians. However, I do not believe that my audience needs to be an expert historian, since the topic does not require as much background knowledge that more complex historical events may require.
In beginning to explore the questions I asked, I looked at our class course reader to see if I could make connections between my topic and what we learned in class. I picked two sources:
-Abernathy, “Befriend someone you disagree with” in Washington Post, May 23, 2021.
-Jeste, [Excerpts on] Cognitive Biases in Wiser, 2020.
One of the topics we discussed was the idea of bias and how pre-existing biases can influence our opinions and decisions, related to the Wiser excerpt. The Abernathy article reminded me of the polarization of bias, since it talked about how America is divided between political parties. I know that especially with Covid, there was a highly polarized attitude towards vaccinations. There was a bias towards the polio vaccine in the 1950s as well. These two articles can lead me to examine what biases were prevalent in society that potentially influenced how the American public viewed the polio vaccine.
For the roadmap of my final project, I will begin with an introduction that gives the reader background information on polio, how it rose and spread in the US, and impact with deaths. Then, I will lead into discussing the 1912 outbreak, and events such as school closure, education impacts, and city quarantines from the Meyers study. I will compare this to the covid school closures. My next paragraph will discuss organization-level responses, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to champion polio research and raise awareness for disabilities through the creation of organizations such as the NFIP and March for Dimes using the Dorfman source. I will also mention the creation of polio committees and their efforts to treat polio from the Laurel Iverson source, and then compare the polio response to covid response organizations. The next paragraph is the development of the polio vaccine. From my background research, key ideas will talk about the two types of polio vaccines and the Cutter incident. The purpose of this paragraph is to provide background information on these vaccines and events. After that, I will analyze how these efforts promoted vaccination to the public. The Stephen E. Mawdsley source talks about how the NFIP recruited teenagers to promote vaccines. Some other sources such as Yeracaris also talk about the demographics of people who were vaccinated, which I plan to use. More research is needed on these topics. Finally, the last paragraph will analyze the differences in approaches and attitudes between polio and covid. I want to mention points such as how parents were more likely to vaccinate children against polio versus covid, because covid is more targeted towards the elderly. I also want to see if anything from the polio epidemic was applied to the covid response, or should have been applied, or could be applied.
Throughout my project, I will be using analytical lenses to deepen and expand my argument–most likely the historical and case study lenses to present to my audience. By studying the historical background of my topic and connecting it to the present-day, I can add layers to my argument. I have found a few sources that cover case studies of my topic, so I can also use those sources to draw conclusions. Even though my topic is both historical and public health related, it leans more heavily towards the side of historical analysis, so my intended audience is for historians. However, I do not believe that my audience needs to be an expert historian, since the topic does not require as much background knowledge that more complex historical events may require.
Annotated Bibliography
Brink, Susan. "Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy." NPR.org, 3 May 2021, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/03/988756973/cant-help-falling-in-love-with-a-vaccine-how-polio-campaign-beat-vaccine-hesitan.
- This source comes from NPR, written by Susan Brink who is an author and co-author of two books. She is interviewing David Oshinsky, a historian at NYU and an author of Polio: An American Story, as well as Stacey Stewart, the current president of the March of Dimes organization. Stewart talks about the March for Dimes and their effort in spreading polio awareness and the trust that people had in the vaccine. Oshinsky mentions a factor of racism that surrounded the vaccinations. There are also some comparisons between polio and covid.
- This source would be helpful in my last section where I make comparisons between polio and covid, as well as the factor of racism which I can incorporate into my project as a negative social effect surrounding the disease.
- This source is found in the Journal of Community Practice: Organizing, Planning, Development and Change. The primary author, Hitchcock, is a researcher at University of Alabama Birmingham and owns her own consulting practice. The main summary of the source is to give background information on a few committees that were created to help give after-care treatment to children with polio, and the successes and challenges of these organizations. This source seems unbiased and strictly informational.
- I will use this source in the first section of my paper, since most of these organizations sprung up after the 1916 outbreak and most likely the information from this source will be used as background information on these organizations.
- This source was published in Cliometrica, a journal of historical economics and is a study of the education that children received during the 1916 polio epidemic. The main conclusion of this study was that polio affected young children the most in terms of having less schooling, and that school closures and parental fear elevated the social impacts of the virus. Since this source was a study, there seems to be little bias within the source towards one conclusion or another.
- This source is helpful to my research because it addresses direct impacts that the epidemic had on children and how it stretched across various aspects of society as well, with city and school closures, which I can connect to the vaccination response.
- The author of this article is Padraig Moran, a writer with the CBC news, but the main focus of the article is an interview with Jill Lepore, a Harvard professor. Lepore talks about the anti-vaccination movement and the resistance against ‘socialist’ ideals of the federal government distributing vaccines. She compares the polio response to the covid response, and explains why anti-vaccination sentiments still exist. There seems to be a slight bias towards a pro-vaccination standpoint since she also says that with the development of the covid vaccine, the vaccine had not even emerged yet and anti-vaccine supporters were already protesting, which seems to give a slight negative tone towards anti-vaccine supporters.
- This source will be used in my comparison between polio and covid in the last section as an explanation to the polarization surrounding vaccinations that repeated itself between the 1950s and 2020s. It also opens up a possibility to explore what changes we would have to implement to break the cycle of repetition.
- Dawn Larsen is a professor of health sciences at Minnesota State University Mankato and published in the American Journal of Health Education. This article gives thorough background information on the rise of polio, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the March for Dimes, background on vaccine development and implementation, and the fight against anti-vaccine protests. This source is very informational and has a slight bias at the end towards a pro-vaccination status.
- Since there is so much background information within this journal article, I plan to use a little bit of everything from this source in each of my body paragraphs. Especially since the article goes pretty in-depth into the March of Dimes, I can use a lot of this information in my paragraph about how vaccinations were promoted, because the organization played a big role in raising awareness.
Works Cited
Brink, Susan. "Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy." NPR.org, 3 May 2021, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/03/988756973/cant-help-falling-in-love-with-a-vaccine-how-polio-campaign-beat-vaccine-hesitan.
Dorfman, Robert G., et al. "Dr. Polio: Revisiting FDR's Medical Legacy." Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, vol. 35 no. 1, 2018, p. 160-192. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/695810.
Laurel Iverson Hitchcock & Paul H. Stuart (2017) Pioneering Health Care for Children with Disabilities: Untold Legacy of the 1916 Polio Epidemic in the United States, Journal of Community Practice, 25:1, 90-111, DOI: 10.1080/10705422.2016.1269249
Meyers, K., Thomasson, M.A. Can pandemics affect educational attainment? Evidence from the polio epidemic of 1916. Cliometrica 15, 231–265 (2021). https://doi-org.libproxy.berkeley.edu/10.1007/s11698-020-00212-3
Moran, Padraig. "Polio Vaccine Set off Wave of Relief, and a Wave of Resistance. COVID-19 Era May Be Similar, Says Jill Lepore." CBC, 15 Dec. 2020, www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-9-2020-1.5604421/polio-vaccine-set-off-wave-of-relief-and-a-wave-of-resistance-covid-19-era-may-be-similar-says-jill-lepore-1.5604925.
Stephen E. Mawdsley (2016) ‘Salk Hops’: Teen Health Activism and the Fight against Polio, 1955 – 1960, Cultural and Social History, 13:2, 249-265, DOI: 10.1080/14780038.2016.1145393
Thompson, Kimberly M., and Radboud J.Duintjer Tebbens. “Retrospective Cost-Effectiveness Analyses for Polio Vaccination in the United States.” Risk Analysis: An International Journal, vol. 26, no. 6, Dec. 2006, pp. 1423–40. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2006.00831.x.
Yeracaris, Constantine A. “The Acceptance of Polio Vaccine: An Hypothesis.” The American Catholic Sociological Review, vol. 22, no. 4, 1961, pp. 299–305. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3708037. Accessed 21 Oct. 2022.
Dorfman, Robert G., et al. "Dr. Polio: Revisiting FDR's Medical Legacy." Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, vol. 35 no. 1, 2018, p. 160-192. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/695810.
Laurel Iverson Hitchcock & Paul H. Stuart (2017) Pioneering Health Care for Children with Disabilities: Untold Legacy of the 1916 Polio Epidemic in the United States, Journal of Community Practice, 25:1, 90-111, DOI: 10.1080/10705422.2016.1269249
Meyers, K., Thomasson, M.A. Can pandemics affect educational attainment? Evidence from the polio epidemic of 1916. Cliometrica 15, 231–265 (2021). https://doi-org.libproxy.berkeley.edu/10.1007/s11698-020-00212-3
Moran, Padraig. "Polio Vaccine Set off Wave of Relief, and a Wave of Resistance. COVID-19 Era May Be Similar, Says Jill Lepore." CBC, 15 Dec. 2020, www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-9-2020-1.5604421/polio-vaccine-set-off-wave-of-relief-and-a-wave-of-resistance-covid-19-era-may-be-similar-says-jill-lepore-1.5604925.
Stephen E. Mawdsley (2016) ‘Salk Hops’: Teen Health Activism and the Fight against Polio, 1955 – 1960, Cultural and Social History, 13:2, 249-265, DOI: 10.1080/14780038.2016.1145393
Thompson, Kimberly M., and Radboud J.Duintjer Tebbens. “Retrospective Cost-Effectiveness Analyses for Polio Vaccination in the United States.” Risk Analysis: An International Journal, vol. 26, no. 6, Dec. 2006, pp. 1423–40. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2006.00831.x.
Yeracaris, Constantine A. “The Acceptance of Polio Vaccine: An Hypothesis.” The American Catholic Sociological Review, vol. 22, no. 4, 1961, pp. 299–305. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3708037. Accessed 21 Oct. 2022.