Recent outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases such as measles have heightened concern over suboptimal vaccination rates. Undervaccination may be due to access barriers, hesitancy over the safety and effectiveness of vaccination, or both. A variety of strategies exist to encourage greater vaccine uptake, including increasing access to vaccination services, improving vaccine education among youth and parents, providing incentives such as financial bonuses to parents with up-to-date children, and mandating vaccination of schoolchildren without approved exemptions. Child vaccine mandates are ubiquitous in the USA and employed internationally in various ways.

Vaccine mandates vary in several key elements, including: target population, what is required, consequences for noncompliance, who is in charge of enforcement, and—perhaps most hotly debated—procedures for exemption. In US states, efforts to remove religious and philosophical exemptions, for example, have become hotly politicized and subject to backlash including protests and ballot measure recall efforts. While the legal and ethical dimensions of such policies are often discussed, conclusions regarding the effectiveness of mandates as a strategy—particularly when they are met with public resistance—remains a thorny issue, as context and implementation factors likely play a substantial role in the success of mandate policies.

This interactive panel will present a range of evidence-based perspectives on the question: Are mandates the way forward for population vaccine coverage? Panelists from multiple disciplines will describe their research using different approaches to assess the effectiveness of vaccine mandate policies and assert a stance regarding the use of mandates as a policy lever. The moderator will facilitate a lively question and answer session following these presentations, inviting the audience to participate in the dialogue around how to study and implement policy on this challenging topic.

Session Chair: Devon Greyson
Presenters: Richard Carpiano, Kolina Koltai, Andrea Polonijo

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The relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health is very robust. In this episode, we discuss the role of SES on health outcomes, particularly the pathways and mechanisms that link education to a variety of health outcomes. Join us to hear from Jarron Saint Onge, Anna Zajacova, Taylor Hargrove and Tarlise Townsend, experts in the area of education and health, as they highlight findings from their innovative research to better explain the education-health gradient. The topics discussed are timey and important, especially considering the role of context (e.g. neighborhood) on this gradient. We hope you enjoy!

Session Chair: Jarron Saint-Onge
Presenters: Tarlise Townsend, Taylor Hargrove, Anna Zajacova

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This episode brings forth interdisciplinary discussions at the intersections of public health, history, and Latina/o/x communities. We want to explicitly link events and movements in US Latinx history to current public health issues. For this panel, experts in Latinx history and public health are paired to discuss ways in which historical events set precedence and foundations for continued and ongoing disparities in health for generations of Latinx. As such, we hope to bridge a massive intellectual and disciplinary divide between the humanities and social sciences at a time when cross-pollination is sorely needed to address health disparities for historically marginalized and racialized communities in the United States.

Session Chair: Lina-Maria Murillo
Presenters: Jason Daniel-Ulloa, Heather Sinclair, Nicole Novak, John McKiernan-Gonzalez

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Population health scientists have been probing questions related to race, place, and health for decades, and we know that where one lives is consequential for a whole host of health outcomes. But what are the mechanisms by which place shapes health? How do we define place and measure neighborhoods? Can we leverage multiple measures of social and environmental characteristics to quantify “healthy” neighborhoods? Finally, since race is Inextricably  linked with neighborhoods, how do we clarify the links between race, place, and health? In this podcast episode, we bring together several researchers who were part of the Race, Place, and Health panel at the 2020 IAPHS Virtual Conference to share some of their latest work and dig into some of these challenging  methodological and conceptual questions.

Session Chair: Adam Lippert
Presenters: Ahuva Jacovowitz, Rachel Berkowitz, Jamaica Robinson

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Recent events in the United States have placed race and racism at the center of the national conversation. Highlighted, perhaps most notably, by drastic racial inequities in COVID-19 outcomes and several high-profile killings of black civilians by law enforcement, systems of racism that have characterized the U.S. since its inception have become broadly visible, even to those who once might have ignored said fundamental structure. Rich and longstanding population health research, which demonstrates the profound inequities engendered by racism, is being widely considered in the current moment as a consequence.

With research on racial health disparities receiving widespread attention, it’s worthwhile to evaluate the assumptions and research decisions that typically underlie this useful literature. In this podcast, we feature a discussion from an interdisciplinary team of researchers on how population health scientists choose to measure, code and use race and ethnicity in their work. We discuss how defining race in health studies is a slippery, assumption-filled task; how the conceptualization and measurement of race and ethnicity fluctuates across disciplinary boundaries; and how health scholars have chosen to, historically, operationalize race and demonstrate inequities.

This episode corresponds to the IAPHS “Beyond the Boxes” blog series. This collaborative series addresses issues, explores nuances, and provides guiding questions for researchers at any stage and of any discipline to do a better job in the way they think, talk, and use race and ethnicity in their work.

Session Chair: Michael Esposito
Presenters: Rae Anne Martinez, Nafeesa Andrabi, Andrea Goodwin

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Billed as an election for the soul of the nation, the 2020 election was pivotal and contentious. There were more votes cast than ever before and the results reveal a deeply polarized country. Join us on  Sick Individuals, Sick Populations as our co-hosts discuss the results of the presidential election and its population health implications.

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Political economies of health are not only national in scale; they are reproduced at the local level. Policies and practices, created and enforced by local government entities, determine who is welcomed, who is counted, and who holds power. This session draws on the coupled disciplines of urban planning and social work – two fields tasked with protecting local community-level health and well-being – to examine how who is welcomed, who is counted, and who holds power determines health outcomes. These themes will be supported with case examples of feminist neighborhood political ecology, changing political units, and place-based power dynamics that prevent communities from attaining full health and well-being. Panelists will incorporate diverse jurisdictional and geographical boundaries to explore how these themes present in cities, suburbs, unincorporated territories, borders, and rural areas across the US.

This interactive session will feature researchers who are countering traditional boundaries of place and power through innovative methods and approaches to meet the needs of rural and urban communities. The first segment of the panel will focus on a discussion of participatory methods that confront local power dynamics, bring visibility to uncounted populations, and reverse political and social exclusion. Each researcher will share their story and experience utilizing participatory research methodologies within and outside the fields of social work and planning. In the second segment of the presentation panelists will conclude with a reflection on the potential for greater municipal level cross-sector partnerships to achieve a culture of health and engage the audience in a discussion related to place and power with the goal of reflecting on cross-disciplinary experiences.

Session Chair: Patrice Williams
Presenters: Monica Gutierrez, Cristina Gomez-Vidal, Kristi Roybal, Jennifer Whittaker

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At its core, the field of global health strives to create more equitable relationships between people and places around the world. However, the contemporary global health discourse lacks critical consideration of the historical background, political context, and disproportionate power dynamics of the current, Western-dominated system. Nearly every aspect of global health from agenda-setting to financing, funding, data collection, publishing, and research dissemination is dominated by the Global North. For example, of the 198 global health organizations around the world, less than 15% are located outside of North America or Western Europe (Global Health 50/50, 2019). Also, a number of recent studies have highlighted the fact that African researchers are under-represented in first and last authorship positions in papers published from research conducted in Africa (Mbaye et al., 2019; Hedt-Gauthier et al., 2019). This discussion brings together researchers, policymakers, and others interested in identifying and correcting some of the pervasive power imbalances in global health that contribute to these inequities. By critically engaging with the shortcomings of our current global health system, we demonstrate how we can work across disciplines towards more equitable global health practice. First, we discuss how policies that are meant to improve public health can exacerbate global inequities by not accounting for the priorities and expertise of local communities. Next, we present results from qualitative interviews with healthcare professionals who deployed to the 2014–2016 West Africa Ebola epidemic to illustrate the harms that can arise as a result of relying on a Western-centric approach to healthcare volunteerism. Then, we examine ongoing trends in persistent colonization of global health that still exist through informal venues such as foreign policy. Finally, we address the extent to which accessibility of data on underserved populations can lead to further exploitation and stigmatization, and the limitations of “informed consent” in these contexts. We incorporate both research and professional experiences to inform this conversation, and will close with a moderated discussion including a synthesis of our presentations, actionable ways to decolonize global health, and strategies to overcome systemic barriers that may impede that goal. This discussion highlights the importance and challenges of cross-cultural collaborations, and lessons learned that can inform true collaborative transnational partnerships and effective global health research, practice, and policy.

Session Chair: Attia Goheer
Presenters: Denise St. Jean, Ezinne Nwankwo, Ans Irfan, Chioma Woko

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Due to the current pandemic, #IAPHS2020 was held as a virtual conference. Join us to hear from conference co-chairs, Dr. Jennifer Karas Montez and Dr. Shannon Monnat to recap the conference held September 30 – October 2, 2020.

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