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Confronted by compelling peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the harms of smoking, the tobacco industry, beginning in the 1950s, used sophisticated public relations approaches to undermine and distort the emerging science. The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry–academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking. A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks.

In the years after the elucidation of the germ theory of disease in the late 19th century, public health officials began to explore new strategies to reduce transmission of infections. Public health programs tracking infectious disease transmission became an important element of infection control and response to epidemics. From an historical perspective, contact tracing focused on the idea that if those infected could be identified, isolated, and persuaded to report their contacts, outbreaks could be slowed and, in some instances, stopped.As a result, contact tracing has frequently been used to address infectious diseases over the course of the past century. A recent review by El-Sadr etal.1 traces the use of contact tracing for syphilis and gonorrhea, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and, most recently, COVID-19. Awide range of approaches, however, fall within the general rubric of contact tracing. These strategies have been based on the authority of the state to surveil and track epidemics; require physicians and public health agencies to report certain diseases; and identify individuals for surveillance, investigation, and contact by public health authorities.2The first major contact tracing programs targeted syphilis (Figure 1). Historically, the tracking of sexually transmitted infections led to stigmatization. Tracing required individuals to name sexual contacts, revealing intimate details about sexual relationships, as well as perceived indiscretions and infidelities, sometimes compromising marriages, families, other personal relationships, and employment. In the 1930s, tracing of syphilis infections required what officials often called \"shoe leather epidemiology\" to hunt down cases (often targeting prostitutes, minorities, and immigrants), as well as the interrogation of \"suspects,\" mandating Wassermann tests, and eliciting \"confessions.\" Contact tracing augmented the existing fear, shame, guilt, and stigma of syphilis.3 Not surprisingly, already vulnerable communities have often viewed these programs as both intrusive and dangerous. The threat of public exposure, isolation, and possible quarantine often encouraged individuals to avoid the \"public health police.\" This historical legacy of contact tracing programs continues to serve as an important obstacle to their widespread and effective implementation. Recognizing that such approaches could have the effect of limiting the voluntary identification of contacts, public health officials duringthe HIV epidemic began to adopt \"partner notification programs,\" which emphasized the contact case's personal and ethical responsibilities to the health of their sexual partners.

The changes wrought by HIV have affected research, clinical practice, and policy. And the AIDS epidemic provided the foundation for a revolution that upended traditional approaches to “international health,” replacing them with innovative global approaches to disease. Over the past half-century, historians have used episodes of epidemic disease to investigate scientific, social, and cultural change. Underlying this approach is the recognition that disease, and especially responses to epidemics, offers fundamental insights into scientific and medical practices, as well as social and cultural values. As historian Charles Rosenberg wrote, “disease necessarily reflects and lays bare every aspect of the culture in which it occurs.” 1 Many historians would consider it premature to write the history of the HIV epidemic. After all, more than 34 million people are currently infected with HIV. Even today, with long-standing public health campaigns and . . .

To help meet the global need for Covid vaccination, the United States could create a program that integrates global health needs into ongoing funding priorities, augments funding for vaccine production and delivery, and assists in building critical health infrastructure.

Since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, historians have been frequent commentators, searching high and low through their research files, scholarly articles, and books to find the closest analogs in the history of past pandemics to the current crisis. Over recent decades, the field of public health history has been transformed as it has addressed the history of pandemics, centering attention on powerful social and structural forces that create unequal vulnerabilities to death and disease, as well as greater attention to the significant obstacles that stand in the way of effective responses.2 In the current issue, Navarro and Markel dive back into the 1918 pandemic in their article \"Politics, Pushback, and Pandemics: Challenges to Public Health Orders in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic\" (p. 416).

Many commentators have described the Covid-19 pandemic as a “perfect storm,” evoking a sense of unpredictability. But myriad biologic, environmental, social, and political forces are shaping the spread of the virus, and the way we conceptualize these forces matters.

Do Pandemics Ever End?Since pandemics are sociopolitical as well as epidemiologic events, their end is determined not only by epidemiologic criteria but also by social, political, economic, and ethical concerns.

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) have become a widely embraced policy to address the US opioid crisis. Despite mixed scientific evidence on their effectiveness at improving health and reducing overdose deaths, 49 states and Washington, DC have adopted PDMPs, and they have received strong bipartisan legislative support. This article explores the history of PDMPs, tracking their evolution from paper-based administrative databases in the early 1900s to modern-day electronic systems that intervene at the point of care. We focus on two questions: how did PDMPs become so widely adopted in the United States, and how did they gain popularity as an intervention in the contemporary opioid crisis? Through this historical approach, we evaluate what PDMPs reflect about national drug policy and broader cultural understandings of substance use disorder in the United States today. (Am J Public Health. 2020;110:1191–1197. 10.2105/AJPH.2020.305696)

Nazism and the JournalBetween 1935 and 1944, the Journal remained all but silent regarding the heinous motives of Nazi science and medicine. What is the nature and significance of silence in the face of such oppression?