Pandemic on the Prairie
A podcast about the intersection of public health, cultural history, and war in Kansas. School closures, mask mandates, infection waves, front line workers, debates over the disease’s origin, disparities in health care access, quarantine fatigue. All of these descriptions could easily apply to both current times and a century ago. In the midst of the current Covid-19 pandemic, many have started looking back to the last global health catastrophe of this magnitude - the 1918 influenza pandemic, also known as the “Spanish flu”. Approximately 50 million people globally, including 675,000 Americans and over 12,000 Kansans, died of this strain of influenza between 1918-1920. “Pandemic on the Prairie” tells the stories of Kansas and Kansans during this tumultuous time of both a World War and a global pandemic. Through learning about our past, we hope to better engage with the present.
Pandemic on the Prairie
The Other Haskell
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Kara Heitz
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Season 1
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Episode 4
Just weeks after the March 1918 “first wave” flu outbreak at Camp Funston, the Haskell Institute in Lawrence saw a similar rash of influenza infections. Around one-third of the Native American students were hospitalized, and 17 died. In this episode, we’ll talk to historian Mikaëla Adams about this early outbreak of the 1918 flu at the Haskell Institute. And we’ll examine the larger context of Indian boarding schools in the U.S. and the failure of public health programs for Native Americans. And what can the Haskell Institute experiences tell us about medicine and discrimination in both 1918 and today?