bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relevance of health economics to vaccines
Authors: Bishai David , Mayora Chrispus
Published: April 2023

A complex system called the immunization system governs the development, financing, and distribution of vaccines. The building blocks in this system include institutions that rely on information about the need for vaccines, the potential benefits, costs, and risks, and the number of potential beneficiaries. There is a demand side to this system based on which individuals can express their own private assessment of how much they will benefit and incur costs to access vaccines including travel time and bearing side effects or the fear of side effects. The demand side also includes social planners who can express the value of collective immunity that goes beyond the private benefit. On the supply side are firms that vary in their comparative advantages in discovering and producing vaccines. Industry-level supply and private demand do not meet at a well-defined equilibrium price, because public subsides often bring the money price of a vaccine to zero. The lack of a market equilibrium emphasizes the importance of information about costs, risks, and benefits for public planners who must make decisions on vaccine adoption and scale-up that maximize social well-being at lowest cost.
Vaccination as investment in human capital
Authors: Sevilla J. P. , Bloom David , Salmon Dan , Bishai David
Published: April 2023

Vaccines can be regarded by individuals as investments in human capital that can yield future returns in the form of the direct utility of health as well as the utility of higher earnings from future productive time. From the societal perspective, vaccines have an emergent property when herd immunity is achieved allowing whole communities to lower their need for precautions and disease control spending. The additional value of vaccines to society is not accounted for by individual choices to accept a vaccine, hence the individually optimal vaccine coverage rate will predictably fall short of the socially optimal coverage. The human capital calculation of the individual value of vaccines does not completely account for nonrational behavioral economics effects on vaccine hesitancy. Nonrational heuristics drive people to incorrectly overweight small consequences in the present and underweight large benefits in the future. People can also take shortcuts like attending to emotions such as fear or dread or shortcut risk-benefit assessment by emulating the choices of people in their social network. In the face of the predictable shortfall in vaccine acceptance, governments will need to play a role in subsidizing access to good information about vaccine benefits and risks and lowering all access barriers. The amount the government allocates to subsidizing vaccine coverage has an upper bound based on the efficacy of promotion measures and the full social utility of achieving higher rates of coverage.
Designing a primary costing study or analysis
Authors: Edoka Ijeoma , Resch Stephen , Brenzel Logan
Published: April 2023

This chapter presents and highlights critical elements related to the purpose and design of immunization costing studies. Core concepts on the scope and boundaries of costing the program which is often integrated with other services are explored. In addition, the perspective of the costing exercise and whether costs reflect those of the provider, the funder or society are presented. This chapter discusses data collection approaches, particularly for key elements such as labor time and allocation of other health systems and shared costs. Methods and data sources on prices are included. Readers are provided resources for sample questionnaires and interview techniques. Importantly, this chapter discusses sampling strategies and provides an example of a sampling procedure.
Data analysis
Authors: Resch Stephen , Brenzel Logan
Published: April 2023

Immunization program costs are generally derived from a detailed analysis of inputs, multiplied by unit prices, and adjusted for whether inputs are shared with other health services. This chapter presents a range of methods for generating robust estimates of immunization costs. Approaches for annualizing and discounting of the value of inputs that have a useful life longer than a year are also discussed in the chapter. Many costing studies collect information from a sample of sites, and approaches for aggregating costs to the national level are explored in this chapter. Techniques for weighting of sample site information is also discussed. As cost estimates are based on assumptions, the chapter concludes with a discussion of approaches for evaluating uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.
Costing new vaccine introduction
Authors: Chatterjee Susmita , Pooripussarakul Siriporn , Brenzel Logan
Published: April 2023

While there are some similarities, the approach for estimating the incremental costs of introducing a new vaccine into a national immunization program is different to evaluating an ongoing program. This chapter provides an overview of the incremental costs of new vaccine introduction in the literature. In addition, the chapter outlines various approaches that have been undertaken to estimate introduction costs. Differences between initial or start-up costs for introduction and recurrent costs are discussed. Data sources are explored and examples are provided.
Overview of decision analysis and cost-effectiveness
Authors: Drabo Emmanuel F. , Edoka Ijeoma , Padula William V.
Published: April 2023

This chapter provides an overview of decision analysis and cost-effectiveness. Here we want to understand value by defining it. Many academicians have often expressed value as a function of cost and quality but measuring vaccine value and expressing it quantitatively is not so straightforward. By focusing on cohort-level analyses of value, we can more accurately determine the impact that a certain vaccine will have for a specific population that is at-risk for infectious disease. Thus, decisionmakers can make local, replicable decisions about investment in vaccines that protect different populations on the basis of regional variation, age, sex, race or ethnicity. The chapter will introduce basic concepts such as the difference between cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis, as well as how to derive measures of budget impact and return on investment from a single economic model. This chapter includes an exercise that evaluates the reader’s comprehension of the definitions to different approaches in economic evaluation.
Measuring and valuing health outcomes
Authors: Natalia Alfonso Y. , Verguet Stéphane , Pandya Ankur
Published: April 2023

This chapter reviews the methods used to measure and evaluate health outcomes. There are a number of different measures that economists have developed over the years to quantify the effectiveness of vaccines and immunization programs. Two of the most commonly used in cost-effectiveness analysis are quality-adjusted life years and disability-adjusted life years, in addition to more intuitive measures such as mortality and incidence rates in an at-risk population. The chapter explores these effectiveness measurements and the types of psychometric approaches that have been developed to derive estimates of effectiveness of vaccines and immunization programs.
Budget impact analysis and return on investment
Authors: Watts Elizabeth
Published: April 2023

We introduce the reader to other important financial measure besides value measures, such as Budget Impact analysis (BIA) and Return on Investment (ROI) analysis. What readers will find is that value assessment is not the only factor that matters in decision making, particularly when stakeholders face budget constraints and are attempting to develop multiple vaccine programs over time. These alternative measures can usually be built off of an existing economic model with little added effort.
Section introduction: advanced methods in economic evaluation
Authors: Drabo Emmanuel F. , Padula William V.
Published: April 2023

Economic evaluation as presented in Section 3 includes the fundamental steps to developing any type of technology assessment, such as choosing a perspective, time horizon, or comparators. However, decision trees often over-simplify some elements of clinical care pathways, and time fixed-effects that are common in decision trees do not represent the reality of spreading infectious diseases. For these considerations, more advanced modeling methods exist in order to better capture complicated modeling assumptions and reflect real-world health outcomes over time. We introduce readers to Markov modeling, as well as simulation modeling methods that can either complement or supplement decision tree modeling in order to derive economic statistics of value.
Section introduction: financing and resource tracking of vaccination programs
Authors: Brenzel Logan , Malaviya Shreena
Published: April 2023

The ability of national immunization programs to deliver vaccines to their target population and reach underserved communities, as well as introduce new vaccines is related to the funding available. Securing and sustaining adequate financing is a critical function of immunization programs. This section provides an overview of global immunization spending trends by source of financing and across country income classifications. Approaches for evaluating immunization expenditures are discussed. Current financing options utilized by countries are presented and discussed. The section concludes with an examination of the external financing landscape, including the role of Gavi, the vaccine alliance and innovative financing mechanisms.
The Conception of Philosophy
Authors: Beiser Frederick C.
Published: April 2023

This chapter analyzes the conception of philosophy among the Lebensphilosophen. Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel all regard philosophy as a worldview and not as an impersonal system. They think that a philosophy should express a philosopher’s attitude toward life, his ultimate values, and why life is worth living. They develop this conception of philosophy in reaction against the idealist tradition, which saw philosophy as science, an impersonal system. The distinction between their conception of philosophy and that of the idealists appeared in the famous distinction between Weltanschauung and Wissenschaft, i.e., between a worldview and science. A worldview had three central characteristics: it was personal, practical, and metaphysical. I trace the origins of this philosophy in its each of its chief proponents: Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Simmel.
Coalition Agreements as Control Devices
Authors: Klüver Heike , Bäck Hanna , Krauss Svenja
Published: April 2023

Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreements are important control devices that allow coalition parties to keep their partners in line, but that their use varies with the preference configuration and the allocation of ministerial portfolios. First, we posit that parties will only negotiate about policy issues when they disagree on an issue that is important to all partners. Second, since controlling a ministry grants parties with important information and policy-making advantages, coalition parties moreover seek to particularly constrain their partners when their partners control the ministry in charge of a policy area. Finally, we argue that coalition agreements only work as effective control devices if coalition parties settle controversial issues in the coalition contract. To test our expectations, we have compiled the COALITIONAGREE Dataset that maps the content of 229 coalition agreements that were negotiated by 189 parties between 1945 and 2015 in 24 West and East European countries. We show that coalition parties systematically use coalition agreements to control their partners when policy issues are divisive and salient and when they are confronted with a hostile minister. Coalition agreements can, however, only effectively contain conflicts when coalition parties seize the opportunity and negotiate a compromise on precisely the issues that divide them.
Introduction
Authors: Klüver Heike , Bäck Hanna , Krauss Svenja
Published: April 2023

When forming a government, many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy contracts. Instead of swiftly taking over executive offices, most coalition governments opt to invest time and resources into negotiating and writing a coalition agreement, detailing the policies that the government will implement. Why do political parties decide to negotiate coalition agreements? In this chapter, this research question that this book seeks to address is introduced. Afterwards, the literature on coalition governments in parliamentary democracies more generally and on coalition governance and coalition agreements more specifically are reviewed and the research gap that this book seeks to address is discussed. Finally, the major theoretical argument and the empirical strategy is presented before the individual chapters are outlined.
The content of coalition agreements
Authors: Klüver Heike , Bäck Hanna , Krauss Svenja
Published: April 2023

Chapter 4 presents the newly compiled COALTIONAGREE dataset which for the first time provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the content of coalition agreements. The chapter starts by illustrating how the length of coalition agreements varies across countries and over time. Afterwards, the chapter sheds light on what coalition parties regulate in coalition agreements more generally. In other words, it is examined whether coalition parties focus on policies, offices, or procedural rules in their coalition agreements. In the following, an analysis is presented which for the very first time explores which policy issues are covered in coalition agreements and how the attention to different policy issues varies over time and across countries. Lastly, the policy positions that coalition parties adopt in their coalition agreements are investigated by exploring how these positions relate to the policy preferences of coalition partners.
Coalition agreements and ministerial portfolios
Authors: Klüver Heike , Bäck Hanna , Krauss Svenja
Published: April 2023

In Chapter 6, the question of whether ministerial portfolio allocation affects the extent to which coalition agreements are used to limit agency loss is investigated. The main argument presented in this chapter is that coalition parties exercise control through coalition agreements, particularly in those policy areas in which their partners control the ministries. More specifically, it is argued that coalition parties demand policy concessions, particularly in those areas that are controlled by hostile ministers. By adopting and publicly communicating policy positions that are close to their ideal points, coalition partners leave the minister little room to maneuver. The results show that controlling the ministry in charge of a given policy area is associated with a significantly larger distance between the position of the coalition party and the location of the coalition agreement, giving support to the idea that parties try to control each other’s ministers through the coalition contract.
Do coalition agreements work?
Authors: Klüver Heike , Bäck Hanna , Krauss Svenja
Published: April 2023

Chapter 7 shifts the focus from explaining coalition agreements to examining the effect of coalition agreements on cabinet survival. Thus, instead of treating coalition agreements as the dependent variable as in the preceding chapters, coalition agreements are now treated as the independent variable in order to explain how long coalition governments last. This allows us to say something about the impact of coalition agreements, and whether they in fact “work” as control mechanisms. It is argued that cabinets are more stable if parties negotiated compromises not only on uncontested but more importantly also on conflictual policy issues. More specifically, it is hypothesized that cabinets last longer the more extensive conflictual issues are covered in the coalition agreement. The argument is tested by combining the COALITIONAGREE dataset with data on cabinet survival. The results support the intuition: Coalition governments on average last longer when coalition parties strike a deal on divisive policies in their agreement.
Conclusions and implications
Authors: Klüver Heike , Bäck Hanna , Krauss Svenja
Published: April 2023

Chapter 8 summarizes the main theoretical arguments and the empirical results of the book. The implications of the results for our understanding of government formation, coalition governance, and cabinet survival are presented and it is pointed out how coalition agreements connect these different stages of the coalition cycle. Following this, the chapter discusses what the results mean for our understanding of parliamentary democracies, and what avenues of future research lie ahead and could be done building on the COALITIONAGREE dataset released with this book. In the light of the findings of this study, the contribution of this book to the literature on coalition governments, party competition, and political representation are highlighted. Finally, open questions and directions for further research are presented.
Proálcool, 1975–1985
Authors: Eaglin Jennifer
Published: April 2023

This chapter examines the creation and expansion of the National Ethanol Program (Proálcool) from 1975 to 1985. It follows the program from its inception first as a fuel supplement program through its intensification as a fuel replacement program. Domestic development of car engines run exclusively on ethanol incited nationalist pride in the program. The commercial launch of ethanol fueled cars drove the rapid expansion of the program after the second oil crisis in 1979. Using the example of the growth of the Usina Santa Elisa, the chapter shows how the program’s expansion successfully transformed the country’s car infrastructure by 1985 as ethanol cars came to dominate the Brazilian market.
The Soft Power Toolkit
Authors: Kurlantzick Joshua
Published: April 2023

China’s biggest global state media outlets have been at the center of its renewed soft power campaign. China has poured billions into the expansion and modernization of Xinhua and China Global Television Network (CGTN) in particular. Indeed, CGTN has tried to build itself a presence that could rival other global broadcasters like Al Jazeera, RT, the Turkish global broadcaster TRT World, and, the Chinese government hopes, giants like CNN and the BBC. Sometimes, China has tried to copy the conspiratorial success of RT; other times it has tried to be more straightforward, like Al Jazeera. China also has invested heavily in training programs for journalists from other countries. Yet, despite all this investment, many of China’s big state media outlets struggle to reach viewers, listeners, or readers, with the exception of Xinhua.
The Sharp Power Toolkit
Authors: Kurlantzick Joshua
Published: April 2023

As in Australia and New Zealand, China is expanding its sharp power efforts globally—and often with more success than its soft power strategies. Unlike the more transparent soft power efforts, China’s back-door, sharper strategies are often designed to conceal Beijing’s hand—to get people in foreign countries to consume Chinese media and imbibe Chinese ideas, without understanding what they are taking in. China wields a vast array of back-door, sharp power media and information strategies, and this chapter outlines Beijing’s sharp efforts that directly relate to media outlets: how China is trying to smuggle information into foreign viewers’ screens, tablets, phones, and other places by taking de facto control of much of the Chinese-language media abroad and sometimes by inking content-sharing deals that do not show where the articles hail from; how China is trying to silence many leading Chinese-language media outlets, and outlets in other languages, that provide critical, independent coverage of the country; and how Beijing is helping other states set up their own domestic media outlets modeled on China’s highly controlled media.
Old-Fashioned Influence
Authors: Kurlantzick Joshua
Published: April 2023

In addition to media and information efforts, China is boosting its traditional influence efforts in many countries: funding political parties in other states, gaining control of student groups in other countries, using allies among other states’ business and political elites to sway policy, utilizing the United Front Work Department (UFWD) to sway ethnic Chinese communities in other states, and other tactics. In the Xi era Beijing has boosted the size and power of the UFWD and given it far more latitude to wield political influence in other countries—particularly among ethnic Chinese, university groups, political parties, and student organizations in other countries. UFWD-linked organizations have used their influence to sway voting among ethnic Chinese in other countries and even potentially insert people with links to the department and affiliated groups into electoral politics in other countries like New Zealand. UFWD-linked organizations have penetrated many ethnic Chinese civic and business organizations in Southeast Asia as well. Chinese operatives have penetrated local, state, and, to some extent, national politics in the United States as well.
A Path Forward
Authors: Kurlantzick Joshua
Published: April 2023

Many countries still have only a rough grasp on the extent of China’s information tools and a limited idea of how well Beijing is using its information and influence toolkit. Even more important, they often actually overestimate Beijing’s successes so far and yet remain at the same time unprepared for China to adapt and improve in the future. This final chapter, by looking in part at China’s information and influence efforts in its initial targets in Asia, and also in part at how Beijing is expanding those efforts globally, will help provide guideposts for how political leaders and civil society leaders should respond to China’s information and influence tactics.
Rock ’n’ Roll Dance and the Africanist Aesthetic
Authors: Malnig Julie
Published: April 2023

Chapter 4 describes the African American basis for the majority of the dances seen and danced on the televised teen dance shows. Popular dances of the time, such as the Stroll, the Hand Jive, and the Twist, are discussed and analyzed in depth. In addition to examining the history and stylistics of the dances, the chapter explores how these dances were marketed, sold, and generally “mediatized” for a mass, primarily white, audience. The chapter underscores the idea running throughout the book that white teenagers were essentially taking Black dance styles and adapting them as their own. This raises larger questions concerning the notion of cultural theft, also discussed throughout the book.
Sesame Street
Authors: Jensen Helle Strandgaard
Published: April 2023

Sesame Street: A Transnational History tells the story of how the American show became a global brand. The book argues that because domestic production was not financially viable from the beginning, Sesame Street became a commodity forcefully marketed all over the world. It is based on archival research in seven countries and contains detailed analyses of how local receptions and rejections related to the global sales strategies and the American ideals it encompassed. Contrary to the producers’ often publicized claims of Sesame Street’s universality, the book demonstrates how the show was heavily shaped by a fixed set of assumptions about childhood, education, and commercial entertainment. This made sales hard as Sesame Street faced skepticism and direct hostility from foreign television producers who did not share these ideals. Drawing on insights from childhood studies and media history, the book lays bare a cultural clash of international proportions rooted in divergent approaches to children’s television. In doing so, the book provides a reflective backdrop to the many debates about children’s media still happening today. By contrasting the positive receptions and the rejections of Sesame Street the book shows that it was only after a substantial rethinking of Sesame Street’s aims and business model that the program ended up on many broadcasting schedules by the mid-1970s. Along the way, this rethinking and the constant negotiations with potential international buyers created and shaped the business and corporate brand that paved the way for the Sesame Street we know today.
Introduction
Authors: Jensen Helle Strandgaard
Published: April 2023

In this introduction, the book’s historiographical backdrop, sources, and methodological framework are presented. It is explained how the analysis combines comparative, transnational, and global history, and the written and audiovisual material is briefly discussed. In terms of historiography, previous work on the history of Sesame Street is considered, as well as histories of childhood, education, and television production in relation to the United States and Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. The book’s overall argument is outlined, showing how the first two chapters—on the domestic history of Sesame Street’s beginnings and on global marketing strategies—together provide a basis and context for understanding the conduct of the Children’s Television Workshop in the three cases dealt with in chapters 3 (the United Kingdom), 4 (West Germany), and 5 (Scandinavia). To understand the outcome of the Workshop’s sales strategies and how they were implemented, the chapter draws up the main contours of the differences between the role of television in children’s lives as seen at the time by the Workshop and European television producers.
Other Childhoods
Authors: Jensen Helle Strandgaard
Published: April 2023

This chapter covers the Children’s Television Workshop’s attempts to sell Sesame Street to the Scandinavian countries in the Nordic broadcasting union, Nordvision. It shows how these efforts unfolded but ultimately failed because, in the wake of the youth rebellion, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway had a broadcasting culture for children that emphasized a utopian progressivist approach to education and youth. This was so radically different and already ingrained in production cultures when the Workshop began talks with the Scandinavians in 1970 that the partners in Nordvision had trouble understanding the benefit of programs like Sesame Street aimed mostly at teaching school-type skills. The chapter shows how, because of the Scandinavian view of television as a children’s spokesperson, rather than an entertaining teacher, it was only the Swedish broadcasting corporation that ended up co-producing Sesame Street after a ten-year-long marketing campaign from the Workshop.
Introduction
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

This is a view of the early Roman empire that its own historians never wanted us to see. It is a history of the big rooms seen from the small, of the top table told from the lower tables. Its events include the Roman invasion of Britain and Jewish unrest in the time of Christ but, until its final climactic year of four rivals fighting for the throne, it is a tale of peace more than war. It is a story of a single ruling household and of tactics for domestic times. It is a resonant story for our own times, of dimming memories of a glorious past, downwardly mobile aristocrats, sideways-moving provincials, upwardly advancing immigrants, personal excesses within the wheels of a powerful, often incomprehensible, machine.
Flattery and fear
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

The courtiers of Tiberius’s house had a strong interest in the ruling house being that of Augustus’s family rather any other house. After fifty years few Romans wanted the instability of the old republic. But that did not mean to everyone in every other house that the emperor should forever be a descendant of Julius Caesar. Augustus himself had been frustrated that his family could not provide a suitable candidate to succeed. There was reasonable ambition in grand men’s minds. The aristocrats Marcus Lepidus, Gnaeus Piso, and other family heads with other heirs to come, might all see their own claims to command Rome’s armies and judge the law for Romans and the world. Those closest to Tiberius could both flatter him with his natural right to rule and play upon his fears of rivals.
Tiberius, Tiber and Tibur
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

The death of Germanicus opened a window onto what was happening along the Tiber. In Rome the people began protesting not just about the fate of their hero but against rises in the price of corn. Tiberius was content to flatter the people of the Forum that he cared about their views on Piso. He was compelled, whether he liked it or not, to keep the citizens fed. The Romans around the Groaning Steps on the Capitol were hungry as well as angry. The Vitellii needed to balance flattery of Tiberius for their own survival against telling truth to power. The closer that the courtiers stood to Tiberius, the less close they were to what was happening outside. No one had to travel far to see the problem but it was safer to keep their eyes on Tiberius than on Tibur and other towns nearby.
Flattery’s textbook
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

A lucky slave was a popular type for Roman readers. It was natural for a master to think that a man was lucky to be his slave or, at least, lucky not to be someone else’s. Sometimes that thought was justified. A loyal slave might be truly lucky, well paid and then freed, often staying on in the master’s house, still telling the master what he liked to hear about himself, maybe more likely to be believed, particularly fortunate if the household was the Palatine and the lucky man could profit from knowing its rules. An unlucky slave could be kept enslaved or cast out into an unwelcoming world, not just profitless but starving. When the writer Seneca was exiled to Corsica by Messalina, he felt hardly better than a slave - and wrote a classic letter to Polybius, a very powerful ex-slave at court to complain.
God-given mushrooms
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

When Lucius Vitellius died in 51 CE, his elder son had already achieved as much as his family had expected of him and more. Aulus was 39, a courtier who was also a former consul and senator. His father had been three times consul. This was a record which Aulus showed no wish to match. He did not live in the past, even the very recent past. He did not ape his older senate colleagues in distant nostalgia. Aulus lived in the present, with a survivor’s eye on the near future. He was a large and genial man with a limp, a low-slung belly and a long experience of watching his superiors. When Claudius died of mushroom-poisoning and Nero became emperor, he knew what the newly powerful boy wanted. In that respect, if not in intellectual range and subtlety, he was his father’s son.
A good job for a glutton
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

The new house of the Vitellii was poor by the standards of Aulus’s childhood. He was no longer part of the Palatine household. He had lost his creditworthiness. It was a good time to be leaving and the new emperor, Galba, solely for his own interests, gave him his chance. One of Aulus’s distant and wealthier relatives, notorious for his indecisiveness, had already received the governorship of Pannonia where Tiberius had made his military reputation. That was no part of Galba’s plan. A general who had just led an army to Rome did not want other generals with the initiative to do the same. Galba gave Lower Germany to the reliably ineffective Aulus Vitellius. Vitellius’s troops soon decided to go further and give the throne itself to their friendly new commander.
Fill me up!
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

Galba had a tiny court, dominated by a male lover called Icelus. In Rome, while Vitellius was still in Germany, Galba was killed by Poppaea’s ex-husband, Otho, who successfully claimed the throne for himself. Vitellius had two ambitious junior officers, Caecina and Valens, who were now organising his campaign against Otho rather than Galba. Vitellius stayed behind for a series of coronation parties. Of Nero’s former courtiers in Rome, Acte escaped to prosperity and Calvia Crispinilla joined the new regime.
No time for a party
Authors: Stothard Peter
Published: April 2023

Aulus Vitellius never much wanted to be emperor. Everyone who knew him knew it. He did not, however, want to be an ex-emperor. There had never been a living ex-emperor and Aulus was not an innovator. Lucius tightened his grip on his brother’s court. As their rivals approached, top of Lucius’s hit list was the man who had given Aulus his first set of Emperor’s clothes, Junius Blaesus, the governor who had hosted the party at Lugdunum. Blaesus might have expected due gratitude. Instead, he was unlucky that a party to welcome him home was held on one of the rare nights when Aulus was not in the party mood. Blaesus, Aulus agreed, must be executed. The means should be poison. He would visit him when he was dying.
The Academy
Authors: Waterfield Robin
Published: April 2023

On his return from Sicily, Plato founded his school, the Academy. This chapter explains where it was, distinguishing between the Academy district, the Academy park, the Academy gymnasium, and Plato’s Academy school. The Academy was both a teaching school and a research establishment. People were attracted there by Plato’s fame and by reading his dialogues. It was not the first higher-educational establishment in Athens, its main rival being one set up by Isocrates. The chapter discusses the main trends of the work and teaching that was carried on in the Academy, focusing on its five most famous alumni: Eudoxus, Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Heraclides Ponticus. This discussion shows the range of topics and approaches that went on in the Academy—and also that it was in no way a school for the perpetuation of Platonism because the senior scholars often disagreed with him. Plato’s role in the Academy is described, including his infamous public lecture “On the Good.” The chapter concludes by showing that the Academy also turned out international political troubleshooters.
Practicing Politics in Syracuse
Authors: Waterfield Robin
Published: April 2023

This chapter gives accounts of Plato’s famous two visits to Sicily in 366 and 361 BCE, when Dionysius II was the tyrant of Syracuse. Chunks of Plato’s Letter 7, the main source for accounts of these visits, are translated over the course of the chapter. Encouraged by Dion and others, Plato felt that he had an opportunity to put some of his political theory into practice by converting Dionysius from a tyrant (an unconstitutional sole ruler) to a king who allowed his subjects some measure of democracy. However, Plato did not expect to turn Dionysius into a philosopher king as described in Republic. The likely nature of Dionysius’s court is described. Plato’s project foundered, in the first visit, on the souring relationship between Dion and Dionysius. The dialogue Statesman, one of Plato’s later political works, shows more realism than earlier works such as Republic, and this increased realism is connected to his negative experience in Syracuse. Despite his earlier disappointment, Plato was persuaded to return to Syracuse in 361, but the journey was a complete waste of time: there was no way Dionysius was going to change. So Plato returned to Athens. The chapter ends with an account of Dion’s coup in Syracuse and his subsequent assassination, and Plato’s likely responses to these events.
Lucy Parham
Authors: Gumprecht Blake
Published: April 2023

Tells the life history of Lucy Parham, one of tens of thousands of Black people who moved to Boston from the South during the Great Migration, transforming the city. Parham moved to Boston from Morven, North Carolina, in 1957. She is one of ten people featured in a book that explores the Great Migration by examining the lives of individual migrants. Each is the focus of one chapter. Their stories bring to life the history of the Great Migration. They reveal a hidden aspect of Boston’s history and shine a spotlight on a singularly important event in the making of Black Boston. They also provide a rare glimpse into the lives of ordinary people living in one city’s Black community.
Elta Garrett
Authors: Gumprecht Blake
Published: April 2023

Tells the life history of Elta Garrett, one of tens of thousands of Black people who moved to Boston from the South during the Great Migration, transforming the city. Garrett moved to Boston from Covington, Louisiana, in 1969. She is one of ten people featured in a book that explores the Great Migration by examining the lives of individual migrants. Each is the focus of one chapter. Their stories bring to life the history of the Great Migration. They reveal a hidden aspect of Boston’s history and shine a spotlight on a singularly important event in the making of Black Boston. They also provide a rare glimpse into the lives of ordinary people living in one city’s Black community.
Why Are Hospital Births Unsafe for Black People?
Authors: Ray Keisha
Published: April 2023

In America, Black people are up to three times more likely than White people to die during or soon after (up to one year) childbirth. This chapter explores why. But rather than isolate any specific reason, it looks at how social determinants build upon one another and intersect with Black pregnant people’s identity in America to create poor birthing conditions that lead to their preventable deaths. All social determinants of Black birthing mortality stem from a long history of government interest in when and how Black women reproduce and gynecology and obstetrics’ White supremacist and eugenic origins; so the chapter begins here. Using pregnant people’s birthing stories, it goes on to examine clinicians’ racial biases, housing, income, ideas of “obstetrical hardiness,” and weathering as social contributors to Black birthing mortality rates.
Hybrid Variations on an Intermedial Theme
Authors: Stam Robert
Published: April 2023

This chapter explores some of the terminology and grids that have been deployed with regard to the interrelations between different media, arts, and texts, while also giving examples of how interlaced these issues have become in the age of the internet. It is not always easy to separate an art from a medium. The cinema, for example, is both an art and a medium; painting is a medium and an art; and so forth. Just as individuals cannot be understood purely as autonomous but only as wrapped in an environing sociality, so art cannot be understood apart from its surrounding social ecology. Twenty-first-century arts and media offer a form of “deep remixability,” whereby digital environments become the hosts not only of all the arts but also of all formats and styles, resulting in a systematic hybridisation. Instead of the classical “five tracks” of cinema, we find an infinite combinatoire of “variables” susceptible to infinite juxtapositions, interfaces, and cross-fertilisations, whereby a variety of aural and visual materials—live action, motion graphics, musical performance, archival footage, computer animation, composited images—can be woven together in a constantly mutating flow.
Impurity and Identification
Authors: Mello Cecília
Published: April 2023

Throughout its history, the cinema of mainland China has displayed a particular affinity with Chinese opera in its different regional and national varieties. An overview of this intermedial history reveals how Chinese opera intermingled with film in myriad ways. This chapter suggests that an intermedial history of Chinese cinema, framed through the opera lens, blurs the divide between old and new media, socialist and postsocialist arts, theatrical and photographic ontology, foreign and national styles, operatic and realist modes, allowing for a more encompassing appreciation of what are, in effect, necessarily impure and hybrid artistic manifestations. The intermedial approach also encourages a reevaluation of Brecht’s misinterpretation of the antinaturalistic performances of Mei Lanfang and the Peking Opera as alienation effects. Instead, the intermedial relationship between cinema and opera purposely promotes spectatorial identification at both individual and collective levels. Ending with an analysis of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬 Bawang Bie Ji, 1993), the chapter traces some vectors for a future comprehensive study of Chinese cinema’s intermedial history, one that will find in operatic theatre, among other arts, hybrid elements capable of inspiring new, nonteleological, and nonbinary configurations and understandings of history.
Childbirth
Authors: Sundstrom Beth , Delay Cara
Published: April 2023

Chapter 5 explores the historical, social, and cultural impact of the medicalization and institutionalization of childbirth in Ireland. An analysis of the campaign for the Coroners (Amendment) Act 2019 led by the Elephant Collective reveals how feminist praxis successfully demanded mandatory inquests for maternal deaths. This chapter also examines the diverse ways that hospital births in Ireland undermine women’s bodily experiences by privileging medical authority. At the same time, this chapter reveals the need to disrupt the nature/technology dualism in childbirth and breastfeeding. Making childbirth a positive experience for women in Ireland requires listening to women and offering woman-centered care that moves beyond a narrow focus on safety while enabling women to take advantage of technology, such as pain relief, through an increase in community-based midwifery care.
Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic
Authors: De Cock Kevin M. , Jaffe Harold W. , Curran James W.
Published: April 2023

Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic: A Public Health Story examines the history of the AIDS pandemic through the eyes of key individuals, including the authors, who were involved in the response to the disease at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Much of the material is based on interviews conducted as part of the CDC’s AIDS oral history project, as well as hundreds of original source documents. The chapters are organized in three sections, reflecting the different tones and viewpoints of the authors and persons quoted. Section I focuses on the United States and takes the reader from the earliest days of the recognized epidemic, starting with the first five cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia in previously healthy, young homosexual men reported in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) in June 1981. Section II describes CDC’s initial AIDS efforts beyond the United States in Africa and Thailand, along with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) nascent AIDS program. Section III summarizes and comments on scientific and public health advances to date, including the origins of HIV and the development of life-saving treatments. The book’s distinctive and numerous firsthand reports offer a unique opportunity for readers to gain insight into the history and evolution of the pandemic and efforts leading to the global response.
Homosexual Men
Authors: Jaffe Harold W.
Published: April 2023

This chapter presents the two main theories that were proposed to explain the outbreak of Kaposi’s sarcoma and opportunistic infections (KS/OI) in homosexual men. The first theory was that an infectious agent, possibly sexually transmitted, was causing immunosuppression in these men. The second theory was that an environmental exposure, perhaps to nitrite inhalants (“poppers”), was the cause. Interviews with patients indicated that they were both highly sexually active and used a variety of drugs. CDC conducted a national case-control study to examine risk factors for KS/OI and concluded that the disease was probably caused by a sexually transmitted infection (STI), but the study could not exclude a possible role for drugs. A second major CDC investigation of a sexually linked cluster of forty homosexual men with KS/OI strongly favored the STI theory and suggested that heterosexual men and women would also be at risk for the disease.
Mothers and Infants
Authors: Jaffe Harold W.
Published: April 2023

This chapter describes investigations into unexplained immunodeficiency and opportunistic infections in infants. In 1982, CDC received reports of such cases from San Francisco, New York City, and Newark, New Jersey. The mothers and infants were extensively investigated by local pediatric immunologists, and findings were reviewed by CDC epidemiologists and immunologists. Although a variety of congenital immunodeficiency syndromes are seen in infants, the immunologic profile of these children resembled that seen in adults with Kaposi’s sarcoma and opportunistic infections (KS/OI). Most of the mothers of these infants were either injecting drug users (IDUs) or Haitian. Although clinical data on the mothers were limited, one of the mothers had Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Taken together, the evidence suggested that the causative agent of KS/OI could be transmitted from mother to infant.
Responding to Fears
Authors: Jaffe Harold W.
Published: April 2023

This chapter describes the increasing fear of the infection, as the HIV epidemic spread in the United States. Healthcare workers, especially surgeons, worried about the risk of occupational exposure, while public concerns grew about the possibility of HIV transmission through “casual contact” and other routes, such as insect bites. Such fears were allayed by several CDC studies. A large serosurvey of orthopedic surgeons failed to detect infections resulting from occupational exposures to blood. And, studies of family members of AIDS patients living in the Bronx, New York, and of residents of Belle Glade, Florida, found no evidence of HIV transmission through household contact or mosquitoes, respectively. These studies helped inform the landmark 1987 Understanding AIDS brochure, which was mailed to every US household.
Projet SIDA in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Authors: De Cock Kevin M.
Published: April 2023

This chapter discusses CDC’s first international research site for AIDS, Projet SIDA. Awareness of AIDS cases in Black Africans seeking care in Europe led CDC to conduct a study in Kinshasa, Zaire, in late 1983. The study indicated an ongoing, previously unrecognized heterosexual AIDS epidemic and prompted CDC to establish a long-term field site in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, Belgium’s Institute of Tropical Medicine, and the government of Zaire. By combining epidemiology, laboratory, and clinical work, the project, under the direction of Jonathan Mann, provided early information for understanding and responding to the evolving epidemic of AIDS in Africa and showed that the virus had been present in Zaire since at least the mid-1970s. Topics of focus included heterosexual HIV transmission, maternal and child health, and the spectrum of HIV-associated disease. Sociopolitical disturbances, including the overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu in 1991, ended this collaboration.
CDC and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
Authors: Miller Bess , De Cock Kevin M.
Published: April 2023

This chapter presents the background and current impact of PEPFAR. With ART, global access to HIV treatment became a dominant concern. In 1999 President Bill Clinton announced the LIFE initiative (Leadership in Fighting an Epidemic), and in 2002 the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was launched. In 2003, President George W. Bush announced PEPFAR, which became operational in 2004 and is now the leading global funder for HIV/AIDS. PEPFAR is overseen by the State Department, with CDC, USAID, the Department of Defense, and the Peace Corps principal partners. Initial focus was on the fourteen LIFE countries, mainly in Africa, but PEPFAR now reaches more than fifty countries. US global collaboration increased to support UNAIDS targets (“90:90:90” and Sustainable Development Goals) and adherence to WHO treatment and prevention guidelines. PEPFAR retains bipartisan congressional support but requires ongoing advocacy and evaluation.