Randall Packard
Zambia
School of Medicine, PhD/MHS program >>View Final Report
Today Zambia is ranked 18th in the world for the highest under-five mortality rate, and its infant mortality rate stands at 102/1000. Of course, the AIDS epidemic contributes to this unfavorable ranking, but there is a longer historical background to Zambia’s high child mortality. This research seeks to understand the history of child health, nutrition, mortality, and morbidity over the course of the 20th century in Zambia in order to understand the context of current high levels of infant and child mortality in the region.
My research will focus on the history of infant feeding practices, and colonial and African explanations for high infant mortality. In examining archival collections in Lusaka and the Copperbelt, I will explore changing infant feeding practices in Zambia from the 1930s to the present. For instance, historically many Zambians practiced sexual abstinence during breastfeeding, believing that the premature resumption of intercourse could poison the breastmilk and harm the infant. I hope to understand how this practice changed over time with increasing labor migration and the introduction of artificial infant formula in urbanizing Zambia. Such historical research may well inform public health research on the social and biological impact of the AIDS epidemic on breastfeeding. I also intend to study the history of orphans and orphan care in Zambia during my summer research trip. Over the past decade, "Orphans and Vulnerable Children" have become a major concern in international public health. Today, governments and NGOs are attempting new models of community-based orphan care to deal with the growing problem of orphans due to AIDS, but historical work will show that there were many different models before these and before HIV/AIDS. My work on the history of African child health and orphan care will provide current public health work with a crucial historical and social background.
I conducted research in Zambia on the History of Child Health in the summer of 2007. The Framework in Global Health grant gave me the chance to conduct historical and public health research in Zambia, where I learned to navigate a vast array of public and private archives including government archives, mining industry archives, mission archives, and private family collections. I also met dozens of historians and public health professionals working in Zambia, which allowed me to discuss my research ideas with established scholars of Zambian history, anthropology, and public health.
In addition to my archival research, I had the incredible opportunity to accompany a group of health professionals to a very rural area of N. Zambia to implement UNICEF's bi-annual Child Health Week program. We spent ten days administering measles vaccinations, vitamin A supplementation, and de-worming medication. This was an eye-opening experience for me in a variety of ways. I assisted in my first labor & delivery in the middle of the night at a rural health center, and I began to understand the very real difficulties of implementing primary health activities in rural Africa. It was also a chance for me to see how history and public health work together as disciplines. As I volunteered during Child Health Week, I was able to interview elderly woman about their perspectives on how childrearing and child health have changed in their lifetime.
The FGH grant gave me the opportunity to see the connections between my two disciplines, History and Public Health, and to see the value of continuing to pursue these connections in my future career as an academic.
Photos © Abby Markoe >> See all Fall 2006 Framework Award winners | 
Project Abstract:
