Editor’s Note for April 2026 Networker
I recently inherited troves of my grandparents’ documents and have been noticing how the content of these yellowing papers resonate with topics on my mind and on the minds of those in my circles; for example, infectious disease, public health, war. My grandparents had a lot of experience with the first topic, seemingly some familiarity with the second, and knew far too much of the third.
They all immigrated in the early part of the 20th century and the subsequent years would provide sufficient evidence to suggest that staying back would have meant further persecution and likely death. I can’t speak for them or know exactly how they felt about life in the United States and their part in it as eventual citizens. But I am going to take a leap and say that the continued existence of the documents, how carefully they were stored and passed along, means something about how my grandparents valued what these papers signified.
Aside from items like their citizenship papers, World War II ration books (all four in the series), and Social Security cards, I found the final vaccination record booklets of one set of my grandparents: “INTERNATIONAL CERTIFCATES OF VACCINATION AS APPROVED BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION,” issued by the “U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE, PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE.”
The first page in the booklet is for smallpox. Smallpox is “the first and only infectious disease that has been eradicated in humans,” declared so in 1980.
WHO began planning efforts to eradicate smallpox in 1959, but the campaign fell short due to a lack of resources, funding, and global commitment. In 1967, efforts were revived through the Intensified Eradication Program. Vaccine research developments, advances in surveillance, and mass vaccination programs across the globe contributed to the success of the program.
Somehow—and again, I don’t have the words of my grandparents to prove it—I can’t imagine them resisting or hesitating to take part in such an initiative. Putting an end to a legacy of three hundred million deaths in the 20th century alone, as well as countless cases of blindness and disfigurement, seems like a campaign they would have been more than willing to take part in.
A later page in the booklet is for cholera, an acute diarrheal infection caused by consuming food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, still common today in places without basic sanitation and safe water supplies. Rare in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Americans typically only pursue the cholera vaccine when planning travel to parts of the world where it is rampant. Basic public health measures have spared (for now?) our continent this affliction.
My grandparents though, had a collective memory of the cholera epidemics in Eastern Europe in the 19th century that killed millions. My paternal grandmother was inclined to use the Yiddish phrase “ah chaleria!” (a cholera!) to react to the mention of a catastrophe or really, any sorry situation.
If we need any more evidence of how interconnected our current global crises are, this article appeared in one of my news feeds recently: “Cholera aid for African countries stalled by Iran conflict.” Due to the war on Iran, emergency cholera supplies are reported to be stranded in Dubai warehouses just as the rainy months are set to begin, when risk worsens. Some of the supplies are intended for Chad, which hosts many Sudanese who have fled war.
My maternal grandmother’s immigration journey involved the care of nephews and a niece whose mother had recently died in the so-called Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1920. That influenza epidemic was made as severe as it was by conditions related to military activity at the time, the First World War and its aftermath. (All my relatives of that generation spoke about various waves of passing-through soldiers quartered in their houses.) As with the emergency cholera aid stuck in Dubai today, war impacts infectious disease transmission and control in countless ways.
Two of those migrating children suffered with the measles en route to the United States. In addition to obvious fears about their surviving the disease (and one of the migrating aunts also feared they’d be thrown overboard), their illnesses led to delays in their entry processing and a one-week separation of the family at the port in Philadelphia. After that harrowing experience, I can presume the family embraced the widespread measles immunization efforts in place by the late 1960s.
What would they make of the newest data on the numbers of unvaccinated children, and 2026 headlines such as, “US nears 1,700 measles cases, with 73 new infections in Utah”?
The United States is on pace to top last year’s measles total this spring. The country will likely lose its measles elimination status—which it gained in 2000—in November, when officials assess the data.
Many of us feel as a nation we’re going backwards (at best). We search daily for the most effective personal and collective responses and act on them, while we don’t lose sight of what a federal government’s sound public health-protective policy should look like. In this edition of the Networker, we’re so pleased to describe and link to a remarkable set of papers reflecting a 20+ year effort toward those kinds of policies. SEHN’s Ted Schettler, involved from the beginning in developing parts of the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals, recently completed one of its ten planks.
Carolyn Raffensperger writes about public health as neighborliness, and Sandra Steingraber's column explores the historical role of the scientist as public health messenger. As individuals we obviously can’t make up for the decimation of what many of us may have taken for granted as basic functions of the federal government (though we can be loud as advocates and voters, as well as focus on state and local level policies), let alone for the colossal harm our government is inflicting elsewhere via a war of choice and other acts of violence. But a reinvigorated individual commitment to collective societal responsibility (a most expansive neighborliness, or we might say solidarity) for the health, safety, and rights of others can surely help to get us back on track, and protect the vulnerable while we do.
As my grandparents all would say in parting, geyt gezunterheyt (go in good health),
Carmi Orenstein, MPH