{"id":106887,"date":"2020-02-20T11:31:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T16:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=106887"},"modified":"2020-11-27T12:29:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-27T17:29:49","slug":"student-research-understanding-the-socioeconomic-dimensions-of-deadly-pandemics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/student-research-understanding-the-socioeconomic-dimensions-of-deadly-pandemics\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Socioeconomic Dimensions of Deadly Pandemics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doctors aren\u2019t the only people who can contribute to the understanding of disease outbreaks. Historians can provide valuable research about past pandemics to provide insights into what could happen today, including the recent outbreak of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where UCF history<\/a> student Andrew Kishuni comes in. Kishuni, an honors undergraduate thesis student, is researching the connection between poverty and the impact of disease. He is specifically looking at the Spanish flu outbreak that killed 50 million people in 1918. An estimated 500 million people \u2014 one-third of the world\u2019s population \u2014 were infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control.<\/p>\n

\u201cBroad, sweeping historical definitions of past epidemics deny fruitful historical inquiry into the oftentimes complex behavior of diseases at regional and local levels,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Kishuni focused his research on four major cities across the South: Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee and New Orleans. He pored through medical reports, government records, newspapers and private letters from the period in these regions. The flu was particularly devastating for those impoverished populations without access to adequate medical care. He found that the U.S. South experienced a greater number of deaths relative to the rest of the country.<\/p>\n