Public Health Labs in History and during Covid with Claas Kirchhelle and Samantha Vanderslott
Episode 90 - April 21, 2022
Claas Kirchhelle (University College Dublin) and Samantha Vanderslott (Oxford University) talk to Merle and Lee about the development and history of public health laboratories and how they worked (or didn’t) during Covid. After first discussing what a public health lab is and how they work, they speak about when they were created in a few countries around the world and how they have developed historically. Claas and Sam note the role of public and private labs together and the key role of Swine Flu in 2009 in how this shaped public health then and during Covid. They also point out the tensions between centralized big data goals and the need for local public health facilities and aims. At the end, Claas and Sam suggest how Covid might be used to shape better outcomes in the future with a greater place for social scientists in future planning.
Further Reading
- Anne Hardy, Salmonella infections, networks of knowledge, and public health in Britain, 1880-1975 (Oxford University Press, 2015).
- Iruka N. Okeke Divining without Seeds: The Case for Strengthening Laboratory Medicine in Africa (Cornell University Press, 2011).
- Melissa Leach et al. “Rethinking Disease Preparedness: Incertitude and the Politics of Knowledge.” Critical Public Health 32, no. 1 (2022): 82–96.
- Sam Martin and Samantha Vanderslott. “‘Any Idea How Fast “It’s Just a Mask!” Can Turn into “It’s Just a Vaccine!”’: From Mask Mandates to Vaccine Mandates during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Vaccine, October 28, 2021.
- Claas Kirchhelle, “Giants On Clay Feet – public health laboratory networks in England, the US, and (West-)Germany (ca. 1930-2020),” Social History of Medicine, forthcoming.
Our Guests
Claas Kirchhelle
Lecturer/Assistant Professor, University College Dublin
Samantha Vanderslott
Oxford University Research Lecturer, Oxford Vaccine Group, University of Oxford