Team Flu — West Coast style
Archive helps students experience medical research
One of the outcomes of Team Flu’s project for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is a complete digital archive of all historical materials consulted for the study. Accessible since fall, the site allows researchers and the general public access to records to better understand how some communities responded to the devastating pandemic of 1918-20.
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| Clockwise from top left: Khanh Nguyen, Deepika
Vijay, Nazeela Sabir and Ashleen Kishore Photo: Scott Lorenzo |
Among the first to use it were four juniors at Valley High School in Sacramento, California. The team of Nazeela Sabir, Ashleen Kishore, Khanh Nguyen and Deepika Vijay is competing in National History Day, an annual contest in which middle and high school students conduct extensive primary research and present their findings. Their project is an exhibit on the 1918-20 influenza pandemic.
At the Sacramento Archives Museum Collection Center, the students found a master’s thesis written by Linda Johnson on the flu’s
effects in Sacramento. They located and interviewed Johnson, an archivist at
the California State Archives, who had helped Team Flu members research the
use of face masks in California.
Johnson directed the students to the Team
Flu Web site, www.med.umich.edu/medschool/chm/influenza, and put them in touch
with Alexandra Stern, Ph.D., co-principal investigator of the study.
“I talked to them for over an hour, answering their questions about the project and discussing the content and scope of the digital archive,” Stern says. “I think it’s great that they’re using the archive to do their project. That is precisely why we put it on the Web.”
The Sacramento group found the death records especially helpful because it
allowed them to see how influenza affected many areas in California. “They did what they could during that time, which was the non-pharmaceutical interventions,” Vijay says.
“This connects to how we can face an epidemic today if we’re not able to create an effective vaccine,” Sabir says. And investigating the effects of one bug seems to have infected them with another. Sounding a little surprised, she adds, “We’ve actually become more interested in the history of medicine, and in doing research.”
—Jeff Mortimer
