Colorado S Healthcare Heritage

In the early days on the Colorado frontier, women took care of family and neighbors because accepting that were all in this together was the only realistic survival strategyon the high plains, along the Front Range, in the mountain towns, and on the Western Slope. As dangerous occupations became fundamental to Colorados economy, if they were injured or got sick there was no one to care for the young men who worked as miners, steel workers, cowboys, and railroad construction workers in remote parts of Colorado. So physicians, surgeons, nurses, Catholic Sisters, Reform and Orthodox Jews, Protestants, and other humanitarians established hospitals andwhen Colorado became a mecca for people with tuberculosissanatoriums. Those pioneers and the communities they served created our community-based humanitarian healthcare tradition. These stories about our Wild West heritage honor the legacy of our 19th-century healthcare pioneers and will inspire and entertain 21st-century readers. Because we can be inspired only if we understand the factsand because facts are more likely to be understood when presented in contextthis chronology includes national and international developments that establish an indispensable frame of reference for understanding how our pioneers created the local-community-based healthcare system that weve inherited.

In 1918 Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, becoming its first female African American graduate (though she was not allowed to "walk" at graduation, nor is she pictured in the 1918 CU yearbook). In Remembering Lucile, author Polly McLean depicts the rise of the African American middle class through the historical journey of Lucile and her family from slavery in northern Virginia to life in the American West, using their personal story as a lens through which to examine the greater experience of middle-class Blacks in the early twentieth century. The first-born daughter of emancipated slaves, Lucile refused to be defined by the racist and sexist climate of her times, settling on a career path in teaching that required great courage in the face of pernicious Jim Crow laws. Embracing her sister’s dream for higher education and W. E. B. Du Bois’s ideology, she placed education and intelligence at the forefront of her life, teaching in places where she could most benefit African American students. Over her 105 years she was an eyewitness to spectacular, inspiring, and tragic moments in American history, including horrific lynchings and systemic racism in housing and business opportunities, as well as the success of women's suffrage and Black-owned businesses and educational institutions. Remembering Lucile employs a unique blend of Black feminist historiography and wider discussions of race, gender, class, religion, politics, and education to illuminate major events in African American history and culture, as well as the history of the University of Colorado and its relationship to Black students and alumni, as it has evolved from institutional racism to welcoming acceptance. This extensive biography paints a vivid picture of a strong, extraordinary Black woman who witnessed an extraordinary time in America and rectifies her omission from CU’s institutional history. The book fills an important gap in the literature of the history of Blacks in the Rocky Mountain region and will be of significance to anyone interested in American history. Media: Denver Post Daily Camera Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine

When an epidemic strikes, media outlets are central to how an outbreak is framed and understood. While reporters construct stories intended to inform the public and convey essential information from doctors and politicians, news narratives also serve as historical records, capturing sentiments, responses, and fears throughout the course of the epidemic. Constructing the Outbreak demonstrates how news reporting on epidemics communicates more than just information about pathogens; rather, prejudices, political agendas, religious beliefs, and theories of disease also shape the message. Analyzing seven epidemics spanning more than two hundred years—from Boston's smallpox epidemic and Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic in the eighteenth century to outbreaks of diphtheria, influenza, and typhoid in the early twentieth century—Katherine A. Foss discusses how shifts in journalism and medicine influenced the coverage, preservation, and fictionalization of different disease outbreaks. Each case study highlights facets of this interplay, delving into topics such as colonization, tourism, war, and politics. Through this investigation into what has been preserved and forgotten in the collective memory of disease, Foss sheds light on current health care debates, like vaccine hesitancy.