Waring’s Joseph I. Waring Jr. Lecture to focus on 1918 Influenza Epidemic

Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble internationally recognized scholar on the history of race and American medicine

CHARLESTON, SC (March 28, 2019) – Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble will present the 2019 Joseph I. Waring Jr. Lecture, entitled, “Forgotten in ‘America’s Forgotten Pandemic’: African Americans and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic”. Her talk is timed to commemorate the centennial of the 1918 influenza, which was particularly virulent in Charleston from October to November 1918. The lecture, hosted by MUSC’s Waring Historical Library, will be held Thursday, March 28, 2019 at 5:30 p.m. in the Basic Science Building Auditorium on the MUSC campus.

Northington Gamble is a professor of Medical Humanities at George Washington University. She is the first woman and first African American to hold this prestigious, endowed faculty position. She is also Professor of Health Policy in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and Professor of American Studies in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. In addition, she is Adjunct Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.  

A physician, scholar, and activist, she is an internationally recognized scholar on the history of race and American medicine, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, and bioethics. She chaired the committee that took the lead role in the successful campaign to obtain an apology in 1997 from President Clinton for the infamous United States Public Health Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Dr. Northington Gamble’s many honors include membership to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine and election as a Fellow of the Hastings Center.

Dr. Northington Gamble is currently working on two book-length projects. She is writing a biography of Dr. Virginia M. Alexander (1899-1949), a black woman physician activist and a history of the desegregation of medical education. A proud native of West Philadelphia, Dr. Northington Gamble received her BA from Hampshire College and her MD and PhD in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Additional support for the lecture was provided by the MUC Office of Humanities, and the College of Charleston African American Studies Program and Department of History.

This event is free and open to the public, though reservations are required. A reception will follow at the Waring Historical Library.

For more information, please contact the library at 843-792-2288 or waringhl@musc.edu.

Please RSVP at: http://bit.ly/2019Waring