Submissions:2018/Public Health and the People's Platform


 * Title: Public Health and the People's Platform


 * Theme (optional): Relationship Building & Support / Wikipedia and the Commons


 * Academic Peer Review option: No


 * Type of submission: Presentation/Discussion.


 * Author: Amelia Buttress


 * E-mail address: @


 * Wikimedia username: gingerninja


 * Affiliation(s) (optional): Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.


 * Abstract: The dreams of democracy that accompanied the emergence of the internet seem, in retrospect, naive and idealistic. It has been said that today it is easier to imagine the end of the world via ecological calamity or nuclear destruction than it is to imagine a new form of social organization. The same could be said about health inequities. The idea that poverty could be eradicated is shrugged off as unrealistic. A deep cynicism pervades public health culture that increasingly focuses on risk reduction rather than a positive vision of the future of humanity. Just over 100 years ago, the first school of public health was opened in Baltimore, Maryland. At that time, areas of professional expertise included engineering to ensure city design would be healthier with clean water and waste disposal. Today, no public health training tracks focus on the digital infrastructure needed to cultivate advances in health at the population level. Wikipedia, as one of the few platforms designed for the public good, remains the best example of a digital platform designed to provide synthetic understanding of many public health topics. However, it also represents the limited imagination and resources that have been dedicated to designing our digital infrastructure in order to make the collective knowledge of human history as useable as possible to improve health globally. This session will begin with an overview of my experience teaching undergraduate and graduate students using Wikipedia as a way to rethink the platforms that exist (both political and technical) to advance the science and practice of public health.  It will further propose a model for partnerships between a number of disciplines: computer science, graphic design, media studies, cultural theory, history, fiction, and epidemiology that could cultivate digital platforms to build a global public health movement.


 * Length of presentation: 45 minutes


 * Special requests:


 * Preferred room size:


 * Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?: in a class taught on poverty and health


 * If you will be incorporating a slidedeck during your presentation, do you agree to upload it to Commons before your session, with a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, including suitable attribution in the slidedeck for any images used?: yes.


 * Will you attend WikiConference North America if your submission is not accepted?: I hope to

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