The PI Nixon Library at UT Health San Antonio is celebrating 50 years of service as a repository of wisdom and a crucible of learning for our future healthcare providers! Tune in online to join local and national experts as they discuss fascinating topics in the history of medicine and health, from the lives of enslaved women to the history of community health workers. Sign up to join and share in the learning.
October 8, 6 pm
Mi Barrio, Mi Salud: How Our Neighborhoods Came to Determine Our HealthTrinity University Urban Studies Director Christine Drennon, Ph.D., will trace San Antonio’s legacy of racial and economic segregation using historic deed restrictions and government documents showing “redlining” of poor neighborhoods.
October 21, 6 pm
Big eyes, big ears, big heart and little mouth: The history and role of community health workers.Dr Jason Rosenfeld will describe the history of community health workers (CHW), from the ‘barefoot doctors’ of Mao Zedong’s China to the promotores de salud serving Spanish speaking communities in the Americas today. He will also discuss the important role CHWs have played and should continue to play in addressing the social and structural determinants of health, issues of health equity and social justice within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing socio-political challenges facing communities across the United States.
October 28, 6 pm
Say Her Name: Resurrecting the Medical Lives of Enslaved WomenDr. Deirdre Cooper Owens will examine how slavery and the forced reproductive labor of black women helped to facilitate the development of modern American gynecology. Dr. Cooper Owens is the Linda and Charles Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her first book,Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history.
November 12, 4 pm
Pandemics & Health Inequities – Stopping History from Repeating Itself
As Dr. Wari Allison will recount, there is a historical record of pandemics that have had devastating morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) rates in the United States and across the world. Always, the most vulnerable population groups are disproportionally affected and the pandemic highlights existing health inequities and disparities. How can we learn from history so that when, inevitably, the next pandemic occurs the most vulnerable people are protected?
Pan Pals, from the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics 