Dr. Sean Wempe, a 2015 alumnus of the History PhD program, has published his second book with Oxford University Press. The timely book – Chronic Disparities: Public Health in Historical Perspective – follows Wempe’s 2019 Revenants of the German Empire:
Colonial Germans, Imperialism, and the League of Nations. Wempe is Assistant Professor at California State University Bakersfield. Read more about Chronic Disparities below.

Chronic Disparities: Public Health in Historical Perspective begins with a controversial and pressing issue facing students today: how have public health initiatives challenged and/or reinforced societal inequalities of race, class, and gender? It explores the cultural, political, religious, demographic, and economic effects both government and private public-health practices have had on inequalities of race, class, and gender in an increasingly globalizing society, from the pre-Modern era to the present.

Chronic Disparities examines events and processes including the emergence of public health and sanitation in Europe; the coercive globalization of systems of health; colonial medicine and the selective application of “Western” medical policy; eugenics; responses to substance abuse; the AIDS/HIV pandemic; and many more. It includes a series introduction that explains this innovative approach to learning history and a conclusion that offers a model for applying the approach in seeking to understand other public health policies, events, and crises.