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The Global Health Histories Podcast

The Global Health Histories Podcast

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 The Global Health Histories podcast series seeks to enhance understanding of the historical context of health challenges facing the word today. The podcasts bring historians of international and global health into conversation with medical researchers and policymakers, examining the cultural, economic, political, and social contexts which shaped past health interventions. Each podcast examines a specific case study of contemporary relevance, addressing not only medical research and the prevention or amelioration of disease and debility, but also health-related policy and diplomacy. The series’ aim is to highlight the potential of historical research to aid national and global medical communities in responding to, and communicating about, the challenges of the present in order to shape a healthier future.Copyright 2025 All rights reserved. Hygiene & Healthy Living World
Episodes
  • Episode 9 - Health as a Bridge for Peace: Ceasefire Immunization Programmes in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s

    Episode 9 - Health as a Bridge for Peace: Ceasefire Immunization Programmes in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s
    Apr 22 2026

    The ninth episode of The Global Health Histories Podcast, hosted by Dr Eline van Ommen (Associate Professor in International History at the University of Leeds), focuses on the role played by health interventions in facilitating peacebuilding in societies fractured by civil war. It examines the concept of health as a common good, an ideal shared by all participants in conflict. In the 1980s the Pan-American Health Organization (the WHO’s Regional Office for the Americas) recognized that the particular importance of immunization was accepted across the political spectrum, as fundamental to child survival. Programmes aimed at preventing childhood infection were developed not only to address a vital health need, but also as a means to build political dialogue and cooperation. This podcast analyses the medical and political successes of this campaign, featuring interviews with two individuals who played prominent roles in the ceasefire immunization programmes in Latin America:

    Dr. Ana Maria Henao Restrepo, a physician and infectious disease epidemiologist, is currently the lead for the Research and Development Blueprint for Epidemics within the WHO's Health Emergency Program. In the early 1990s, she was the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) immunization advisor in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

    Mark Schneider was the Chief, Office of Analysis and Strategic Planning of PAHO/WHO in the 1980s, and Coordinator of the Central American initiative "Health as a Bridge for Peace”. He represented PAHO at several of the Central American peace summits which led to the Esquipulas Accords and to the peace agreements ending the Central American conflicts.

    Further Reading

    Ciro de Quadros and Daniel Epstein, ‘Health as a bridge for peace: PAHO's experience’, The Lancet, 360, 2002, s25-s26 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(02)11808-3/fulltext

    Leonard Rubenstein, ‘Defying expectations: Polio vaccination programs amid political and armed conflict’, Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2010. https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PB%2064%20-%20Polio%20Vaccination%20Programs%20Amid%20Political%20and%20Armed%20Conflict.pdf

    Ian Russell, Laura Wise, and Sanja Badanjak, ‘Breathing Space: Vaccination Ceasefires in Armed Conflict’, PeaceRep Publications, 2021 https://era.ed.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/3e29e882-1899-487c-9232-c394ef9297fe/content

    Mark Schneider, 'Health as a Bridge to Peace', World Health, October 1987 https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/97da7914-f723-4034-8de6-f78205143f53/content

    ‘Health as a Bridge for Peace’, Making a World of Difference: Stories About Global Health Exhibition. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/makingaworldofdifference/collection-detail.html?imgid=28&imgName=OB9416-md
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Episode 8 - Socialist tropical medicine and malariology

    Episode 8 - Socialist tropical medicine and malariology
    Mar 16 2026
    The eighth episode of The Global Health Histories Podcast, hosted by Shane Doyle (Professor of African History and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Heath Histories at the University of Leeds), focuses on an important but little-known aspect of global health history, the role of socialist models of disease control in shaping malaria programmes in the global south. This is a subject of substantial relevance in a period when health has, again, become intensely politicised. The discussion features an interview with two experts in socialist malariology: Dr Marek Eby, an historian of infectious disease control programs and the Soviet Union. Marek is a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds on the Wellcome Trust-funded project ‘The Soviet Union, the WHO, and Global Health, 1957-1991’; and Dr Bogdan Iacob, a researcher at the "Nicolae Iorga" Institute of History in Bucharest and at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies in Vienna, who has published widely on the impact of Eastern European medical teams on disease control in newly independent countries in the global south. This episode highlights the distinctive contribution made by researchers from Russia and southeastern Europe in the development of malaria control programmes in the global south. In particular, the discussion emphasises how malariologists from this region pressed international agencies like the WHO to adopt anti-malaria strategies that were radical in nature. In contrast to ‘vertical’ colonial or American-led approaches, socialist malariologists argued that malaria control only worked where it was comprehensive in scope: multi-regional, multisectoral, and tied to rural transformation. As the podcast reveals, this approach reflected not only Soviet ideology, but also medical cultures shaped by the modernism of late-Tsarist Russian imperialism and interwar nation-building in Eastern Europe. In analysing the obstacles faced by socialist malariology within the structures of global health, the episode draws out several key legacies for contemporary health politics, most obviously the human cost associated with the politically-inspired withdrawal of global health funding by the world’s wealthiest nations. Further reading: Eby, Marek. Cold War Form, International Content?: The Martsinovskii Institute, The World Health Organization, and the Wider Networks of International Malariology, 1950s–1980s. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350423985.ch-10. Iacob, Bogdan. Malariology and Decolonization: Eastern European Experts from the League of Nations to the World Health Organization. Journal of Global History. 2022;17(2):233-253. WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases: https://tdr.who.int/our-history https://tdrstrategy.org/history-and-achievements/ The Soviet Union, the WHO and Global Health, 1957-1991
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Episode 7 - Faith-Based Organisations and pandemic preparedness

    Episode 7 - Faith-Based Organisations and pandemic preparedness
    Mar 6 2026
    The seventh episode of The Global Health Histories Podcast, hosted by Shane Doyle (Professor of African History and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Heath Histories at the University of Leeds), focuses on faith-based organisations’ response to pandemics. The podcast features interviews with four individuals who were nominated by the WHO Faith Network: Professor Emma Tomalin, Professor of Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds, currently researching on Faith-Based Organisations and pandemic preparedness; Monsignor Robert Vitillo, Caritas Internationalis special advisor on HIV/AIDS, and Senior Advisor to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development; Reverend Christiana Sutton-Koroma, a key figure in interfaith efforts to control Sierra Leone’s 2014-16 Ebola epidemic; and Rehanah Sadiq, Senior Muslim Chaplain within the UK’s National Health Service, former advisor to the World Health Organisation on the adaptation of Islamic burial practices in pandemic contexts. While these interviews demonstrate that the roles played by faith communities during health emergencies have been diverse, a number of topics recur. Some defining characteristics of faith-based interventions have been constant over the centuries: a focus on dying with dignity, on supporting the families of the very sick, and on addressing societal trauma during periods of crisis. Other themes have developed in significance during recent pandemics: a recognition that faith leaders are ideally placed to counter medical misinformation and loss of trust; a willingness to direct moral advocacy towards issues of health inequity; and the development of close collaborative partnerships with Ministries of Health and United Nations Organisations. Additional links Centre for Global Health Histories WHO Faith Network https://cdcmuseum.org/exhibits/show/ebola/communicationandparticipation/faith-culture-tradition/faith-leaders Sarah Hess, Sally Smith, and Shanmugapriya Umachandran, ‘Faith as a complex system: engaging with the faith sector for strengthened health emergency preparedness and response’, The Lancet Global Health, 2024; 12 (11): e1750-e1751 P. Lyons et al., ‘Engaging religious leaders to promote safe burial practices during the 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease outbreak, Sierra Leone’, Bulletin of the World Health Organisation. 2021 Apr 1; 99 (4): 271-279.
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    1 hr and 35 mins
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