In the past 30-40 years, "vertical" movements to tackle specific disease problems-or even eliminate particular disease vectors-have become the norm for global health interventions, replacing a short-lived Primary Health Care movement that sought to broadly improve health and welfare conditions from the bottom up in resource-poor countries around the world. Many of these vertical programs were at first implemented with little consideration of specific local circumstances regarding difference in disease burden, transmission pathways, microbial strain, existing local treatment and control approaches, significant historical factors, or type and degree of suffering. Recent campaigns have attempted to revisit the problem of the "local." This course examines some of the most influential of these global vertical disease control campaigns from the 1950s through the present. Our goal will be to elucidate some of the crucial factors that have shaped local experiences of the relevant diseases, and that have influenced the direction and outcome of vertical control efforts at the local and global levels. Students will extensively research a particular campaign and its potential effects in a geographical location and time period of their choice.
