Location: SBU Health Sciences Center, Level 2, Lecture Hall 2
Prof. Chris Warren (Brooklyn College) will be sharing his research into the history of three health concerns spanning the twentieth century in which the built environment was directly or indirectly implicated: rickets from 1900-1940; lead poisoning from 1960-1980; and type-2 diabetes in the years since the 1980s. Awareness of rickets arose in a rapidly urbanizing society where immigration and urban overcrowding were overwhelming concerns. Lead poisoning became a massive public health issue—“the silent epidemic of the slums,”—in an era when the nation had committed unprecedented resources to ameliorating urban poverty; and the current epidemic of type-2 diabetes coincides with deep cultural concerns with lifestyle, fitness, and chronic illness. In each case, the ethnicity and class of the perceived “at-risk” child loomed large in agenda- setting; in each case, vocal critics from within and without the medical and public health communities called for just and sustainable solutions; but in each case, the “solution” chosen lay in a biotechnological fix rather than modifications to the built environment that gave rise to the problem in the first place.
