On Keeping the Faith in 2018.

Before beginning today’s note, a word about the SPH This Week publishing schedule. As we have in years past, we will pause SPH This Week for the next four weeks, recommencing on August 26. We do this to acknowledge the heart of summer, a time to relax and reflect before the bustle of fall.

In 2018, of course, on many days it is not so easy to relax. Amid the swirling outrages of the last two years, the sheer number of health threats that emerge from the actions of the Trump administration have been truly concerning. From its recent actions against breastfeeding, to its rollback of environmental standards, to its determination to place an opponent of reproductive freedom—and progressive change more broadly—on the US Supreme Court, to its assault on the well-being of migrant families, the Trump administration has allowed little peace to those who care about creating a healthier world.

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This point was underscored by last week’s observance of the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. The arc of Mandela’s story is well-known—his early struggle against apartheid, his decades of imprisonment, his release and later service as president of South Africa. Viewed together, it is an inspiring tale of setbacks giving way to ultimate triumph. Yet it is worth taking a moment to consider the middle of the story, when Mandela spent 27 years in prison for trying to achieve a more just society. How must those years have looked from the inside of a cell? We often talk of the uncertainty of our present political moment—how might this have compared to Mandela’s uncertainty over whether or not he would ever see freedom again, or whether his country would ever acknowledge the human rights of all its citizens, not just its white ones? How much courage must it have taken for him to simply keep the faith, day in and day out?

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By way of the first example, in the 19th century, puerperal fever—caused by a bacterial uterine infection—was a common postpartum killer in both Europe and the United States, claiming many lives. Also called “childbed fever,” the illness would strike women in the days immediately following childbirth. It was a terrifying disease, described as “raging fevers, putrid pus emanating from the birth canal, painful abscesses in the abdomen and chest, and an irreversible descent into an absolute hell of sepsis and death—all within 24 hours of the baby’s birth.”

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In the case of both Semmelweis and the HIV/AIDS movement, having courage meant contending with the possibility that change might not come within a single lifetime. It meant attempting to engage with a social/political/medical establishment that was at best indifferent and at worst actively hostile to the concerns of advocates and innovators.

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I hope everyone has a terrific break.

Warm regards,

Sandro

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor
Boston University School of Public Health
Twitter: @sandrogalea

Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Meaghan Agnew, Michelle Samuels, and Eric DelGizzo for their contributions to this Dean’s Note.

Previous Dean’s Notes are archived at: /sph/tag/deans-note/