American Association for the History of Medicine: Report of the Ninety-First Annual Meeting

The ninety-first annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine was held in Los Angeles, California, May 10–13, 2018, at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center. The following summary has been prepared by Jodi L. Koste and is intended for the information of the members of the association. The official minutes and reports are preserved in the Office of the Secretary. The final meeting program, featuring the titles of the papers and the names of all the presenters, may be found on the AAHM website at http://histmed.org/meetings.html.

Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Council of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Inc

May 10, 2018
The regular meeting of the AAHM Council was called to order by President Chris Crenner at 1:13 p.m. in Optimist A & B of the Luskin Conference Center. All officers and council members were present except Alan Kraut and Mical Raz.

Council approved the minutes of the 2017 council meeting as published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 91, Number 3, 2017 pp. 624–51. The council reviewed, discussed, and accepted the reports of the secretary, treasurer, and the association’s standing and ad hoc committees. Council discussed the issues summarized on p. 511.

Report of the Secretary (Jodi Koste)

During the past year, the Office of the Secretary remained busy as the central contact point for the association. Major activities for the year included providing support for the program and local arrangements committees for Los Angeles, negotiating a contract for a hotel for the Ann Arbor meeting in 2020, assisting with the transition of the association’s financial management from Merrill Lynch to Wells Fargo, maintaining the website, and responding to member inquiries.

Thanks to the efforts of the History of Science Society, the association was the recipient of some travel grant funding from the National Science Foundation. These funds are helping to defray costs for graduate students and recent PhDs to attend the meeting in Los Angeles. The process of applying for the travel grants and the criteria for granting them vary from those followed by the AAHM Travel Grant Committee and posed a few challenges. The secretary will continue to work with future travel grant committees to streamline the process and maintain the requisite documentation.

At the request of council, the secretary worked with Chesapeake Health Education Program, Inc., (CHEP) to renew the contract of meeting planner Carly Spiewak. Ms. Spiewak continues to provide outstanding service for the association and has been involved since the start of the new contract year in August 2017 with the planning for the 2018 meeting in Los Angeles. The year-to-year contracts with CHEP and Ms. Spiewak have worked well for both parties.

The Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) manages the association’s membership database and handles annual membership renewal. The staff at JHUP has provided good service in the last year, and members’ problems or needs have been addressed or resolved in a timely fashion. We will continue to explore with JHUP opportunities to encourage individuals to sustain their membership status from year to year. On December 31, 2017, the end of the membership year, the association had 878 active members. One month later, the membership consisted of just 501 individuals.

As of April 2018, there are 870 members of the association, 9 more than a year ago. The current profile includes 735 members from the United States (729 in 2017), 138 student members (124 in 2017), and 135 international members (132 in 2017). As the annual meeting approaches, we experience a jump in membership as lapsed members rejoin and new members are added through the meeting registration process. This pattern has been consistent since 2015 when the association included a year of membership with payment of the non-registration fee. This practice has allowed us to bring membership levels up to the preceding years, but there has been no sustained growth.

The AAHM Facebook group has seen continued regular activity through the year for announcements and queries related to the history of medicine. A representative from the Education and Outreach Committee now serves as a group administrator. The Facebook group now has 2,254 members (161 more than in 2017).

Since April 2017 the association has learned of the death of the following members and extends it condolences for the loss of:

• Marcel Bickel, Bremgarten, Switzerland

• John Burnham, Columbus, OH

• Corinne Sutter-Brown, Rochester, OH

• Dora Weiner, Los Angeles, CA

• Leonard Wilson, Minneapolis, MN

Respectfully submitted, Jodi Koste, Secretary

Report on the Financial Status of the AAHM for 2017 (H. Hughes Evans)

1. I. The independent accountant’s review report for 2017 on the finances of the association as managed through our accounts at Merrill-Lynch. (The accountant’s review report is on pp. 541–44.)

   1. a. The report shows that in 2017, the unrestricted assets of the association increased from $341,139 on 12/31/16 to $380,197 on 12/31/17 (p. 541). Membership dues collected in 2017 were $67,445, down from $87,070 in 2016 (p. 541). This figure reflects dues received before 12/30/17.

   2. b.

      Notable figures reflected on the balance sheet on p. 541 between 2016 and 2017:

      1. i. There was a significant positive increase in the net realized and unrealized gains/losses on marketable securities as of 12/30/17 to $19,021. On 12/31/16 the amount was $10,193.

   3. c.

      Notable figures reflected on the schedule of expenses on p. 541:

      1. i. Expenses for publications in 2017 came to $32,960. (Please note that we count membership dues as revenue and then we count the cost of Johns Hopkins University Press subscriptions as expenses, which means that the more we bring in from membership dues the higher our expenses for publications.) This figure compares to $35,341 in 2016.

      2. ii. Administrative expenses in 2017 were $31,397 (They were $23,221 in 2016.)

      3. iii. There was annual meeting income in 2017 of $27,302. In 2016, the Annual Meeting loss was ($11,761). The AAHM employs the “cash basis of accounting” method, which means that expenses are posted in the year they accrue.

2. II. The year-end statement for the AAHM Endowment Management Account. It is important to note that we switched banks from Merrill-Lynch to Wells Fargo in the fall of 2017. The AAHM funds are invested as follows: The AAHM operating account (the fund used to pay for operating costs throughout the year) is invested 100% in cash. The AAHM reserve account is invested for both growth and income and we seek to maintain a balance of approximately 50% equities and 50% fixed income. On December 30, 2017, its holdings were as follows: cash, 3.63%; equities 41.52%; fixed income, 54.84%.

   The Net Portfolio Value for the combined AAHM accounts (checking and reserve) as of 12/30/17 was $380,197.36. Of that amount, $84,515.90 was in our operating (checking) account, and $295,681.46 in the reserve account. The reserve account is rebalanced annually, typically in the spring.

3. III. Report of the holdings and status of the investment accounts of The History of Medicine Foundation (HMF), given below.

   The HMF has six separate accounts. Their year-end balances for December 30, 2017, rounded to the nearest dollar, are:

   1. a. Prize Endowment Account: annual prizes, not otherwise supported: $460,418. ($420,988 on 12/31/16)

   2. b. Pressman Account: annual Pressman Burroughs-Wellcome award, $93,581. ($82,940 on 12/31/16)

   3. c. Estes Fund Account: annual Estes Prize, $20,736. ($18,253 on 12/31/16)

   4. d. Rosen Award Account: $63,564. ($56,355 on 12/31/16)

   5. e. Executive Director Fund: $1,332,049. This is the fund to endow a paid executive director position. ($1,209,026 on 12/31/16)

   6. f. Travel Fund Account: This account began as fundraising associated with the association’s 90th birthday celebration and has continued since that time to help support the annual travel awards. $11,938.

The holdings in the investment accounts of the association and the History of Medicine Foundation are invested according to the investment policy approved by the council in 1999 at the New Brunswick meeting of the association and reaffirmed in 2008, with emendations approved by the Finance Committee and council in 2012, which allow for investments in individual stocks and bonds in the Executive Director Fund, and in 2014, which allow for investments in exchange traded funds as well as mutual funds in all accounts, and individual stocks and bonds in the prize account.

Respectfully submitted, Hughes Evans, Treasurer

Summary of Motions Passed by Council

Council approved the formation of an ad hoc committee on development and fundraising to plan for a campaign that will lead up to the 100th anniversary of the association.

Council approved the new members of the editorial board for the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.

Council discussed the report of the Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome prize committee and will send along recommendations for a standard rubric for evaluation as well as suggestion for the prize call.

Council also discussed the Rosen Prize Committee and will be sending along recommendations to assist them in evaluating nonbook submissions and recommend they develop a nomination processes for nonbook nominations.

Council voted to end multiple abstract submissions for the annual meeting. It further recommended a secondary deadline for poster abstract submissions.

Council passed a resolution related to the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees’ strike here in California, May 7–9, 2018.

Council voted to have the officers investigate options for electronic voting for bylaw changes and other issues.

Council will charge the newly created Standing Committee for Travel Grants to administer grant funds, see new sources of travel grant money, and gather information on the National Science Foundation grant funding the association is receiving.

Council wants to recharge the Membership Committee to address the issue of stagnant membership numbers.

Council discussed the draft of a social media policy forwarded by the Education and Outreach Committee and thanked committee members for their work. Council will send back the draft to the committee for revisions.

Council discussed exploring options for an executive director with our existing funding.

The officers will engage in a variety of background work so that they may lead a strategic planning session for the association in Columbus. They will ask all standing committees to engage in similar background work and report their findings before the meeting in Columbus.

Standing Committee Reports

Finance Committee

Hughes Evans, AAHM Treasurer, sent the committee her report on the financial status of the AAHM as of 12/31/2017. Her report covers three areas: the accountant’s report; the statement of the AAHM Endowment Management Account; and the report on the holdings and status of the History of Medicine Foundation accounts. The committee finds the Treasurer’s report and the supporting documentation to be in good order. The AAHM books balance. The allocations within the investment accounts are largely in accord with the investment policy that that council approved in 1999 with emendations in 2008, 2012, and 2014.

In fall 2017, the association’s management team switched from Merrill-Lynch to Wells Fargo. In making this change, the Treasurer consulted with the Finance Committee. While resulting in some delays in reporting, the transition now appears to have been smooth and effective.

The committee recommends that the treasurer and council put on its agenda for 2018–19 the review and updating of our investment policy.

The committee was pleased to see that its recommendation last year to begin planning a fundraising effort for our 100th anniversary in 2025 has been acted upon, including the creation of an ad hoc committee to guide that effort, to recommend a set of priorities for the funds, and to put this important initiative in motion. We applaud the appointment of Margaret Marsh to chair that committee and thank her for her continued service to the AAHM.

The decline in membership numbers and revenues raises concerns about long-term prospects for the AAHM and the balance of spending and revenues. We recognize that the council and officers are engaged with the issue of declining membership numbers. We suggest that discussions also address the issue of AAHM expenses—including those associated with the annual meeting.

We commend and thank Hughes for her continued service as treasurer and her skillful and responsible stewardship of the association’s finances.

Respectfully submitted, James Bono (Chair), Justin Barr, and Arleen Tuchman

Nominating Committee

The AAHM Nominating Committee is pleased to provide you with our slate for AAHM Council—for circulation in advance to the AAHM membership through the Newsletter and for voting at the next business meeting in Los Angeles in 2018.

• For President: Susan Lederer

• For Vice President: Keith Wailoo

• For Council through 2021:

• Eram Alam, University of Pennsylvania

• Janet Golden, Rutgers University

• Laurence Monnais, Université de Montréal

• Arlene Shaner, New York Academy of Medicine

Respectfully submitted and with our gratitude to all the nominees for their willingness to continue to serve AAHM in this way, David Jones, Micaela Fowler-Sullivan, and Sarah Tracy (Chair)

Publications Committee

New proposed members for the Bulletin of the History of Medicine editorial board are: David Courtwright – University of Florida, Projit Mukharji – University of Pennsylvania, Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr. – Columbia University, Alexandra Minna Stern – University of Michigan.

The NewsLetter continues as it has in the past years, being distributed in print and posted online; also the electronic version is emailed to all members. The website continues to have content added that reflects the work of the association and news of its members and of general interest to the history of medicine community.

There has been continued discussion about how to make the syllabus archive more accessible and more up-to-date. The Bulletin has agreed to take on this task. As of now, the Bulletin’s pedagogy blog is found on a Wordpress site. The Bulletin editors plan to move the syllabus archive (currently on the department website) to the Wordpress site. This should facilitate access to the syllabus and, they hope, create some helpful synergy between the blog and the syllabus archive. We need to ensure that the information about the Wordpress site and its contents is widely distributed to our members, perhaps as an announcement in the NewsLetter and on the AAHM web.

Sincerely, Rima Apple, (Chair), Christine Ruggere, Scott Podolsky

Committee on Student Affairs

The committee is supported by: Catherine Mas, Yale University (Chair) and Walt Schalick, University of Wisconsin (Faculty Representative).

The AAHM Committee on Student Affairs continues to be an inviting and representative body whose aim is to provide assistance, community, and representation to the graduate and professional student members of AAHM.

2017 Meeting Recap: Approximately forty-five students attended the twelfth annual graduate student social event in Nashville, comparable to the previous year’s figures. We again thank the Local Arrangements Committee for coordinating the logistics of the event and providing supplementary funding. This happy hour extended the opportunity for students in a range of disciplines from many different institutions to convene, meet one another, and trade ideas, information, and advice. Prof. Walt Schalick continues to be a supportive faculty representative.

Student Section Webpage and Internet Presence: Membership of the Student Section of the AAHM, an online forum on Yahoo-Groups, has grown to 173. In the past year, it has served as a platform for announcing opportunities for research and funding in the history of medicine. There will be discussion at the upcoming annual meeting about the effectiveness and accessibility of this means of communicating.

2018 Meeting Plans: We plan to host our thirteenth-annual graduate student event at the AAHM meeting in Los Angeles. We sincerely thank the Local Arrangements Committee for their work in coordinating this event. In addition to addressing any issues student members suggest, we will discuss preparation for qualifying exams and assess the relative effectiveness of different online platforms for communicating with academic peers.

Respectfully submitted, Catherine Mas and Walt Schalick

Osler Medal Committee

The Osler Medical Committee (Powel Kazanjian, Chair; Joel Howell and Mindy Schwartz, members) received seven submissions this year. Committee members read all seven papers, made comments, ranked each paper according to historic merit, then submitted to me. I then had email discussions about the rankings and, on that basis, the committee made decisions about the award this year.

On the basis of the committee’s rankings, the committee unanimously agreed that Helen Perry Knight’s “St. Luke’s Hospice: A Hospital’s Engagement in the American Hospice Movement” was the Osler Medal winner. Knight’s paper is well written, her narrative is compelling, her historical analysis is insightful, and her references (including archival) are rich. Knight is a student at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; her advisors are Daniel Todes and Jeremy Greene.

The committee then addressed whether an honorable mention should be awarded this year. It was evident from the comments that several committee members had serious concerns about the depth of the historical analysis in each of these remaining papers. For this reason, the committee decided not to award an honorable mention award to any other submission this year.

Respectfully submitted, Powel Kazanjian, Chair

Shryock Medal Committee

One of the committee’s objectives this year was to increase the number of essays submitted to the competition. During fall 2017, we contacted the organizers of the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine, Heidi Morefield and Jeremy Greene, and asked them to share the announcement with participants. We also announced the competition through the online humanities and social sciences network, H-Net (www.h-net.org). By the due date, we received a total of eleven submissions from ten different schools and four different countries. The earliest submission arrived in mid-November.

As chair, I received and stored each essay in a personal Dropbox account and, once the deadline passed, shared it with the committee. After reviewing the essays, each member submitted their top choices with a brief explanation. The essays we received approached the history of medicine from a variety of different perspectives, and committee members recognized significant value in many. The initial stage of the review process did not yield a unanimous decision, but we came to a consensus after discussion. For the Shryock Award, we selected Margaret Vigil-Fowler’s “More Than Icons: A Granular Approach to Exposing the Hidden History of African American Students at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.” We also recognized Annelie Drakman’s “The Closing of the Open Body: A Rationale for the Nineteenth-Century Abandonment of Bloodletting” for an honorary mention. The committee deemed these works worthy of distinction because of the primary source collections they utilized and the compelling critical perspectives they offered the field. A full list of the essays received is available below.

Future committee chairs may find it useful to know that Dropbox proved effective for collecting and sharing the essays. In retrospect, I would have also shared the Dropbox folder with the association’s secretary in order to give the committee access in case I was unable to perform my duties for any reason. In addition, future committees might generate additional submissions by sharing the announcement more widely in online forums. In particular, posts to the Society for the Social History of Medicine’s Facebook page or other relevant social media groups could prove beneficial.

Respectfully submitted, Adam Biggs (Chair), Lara Freidenfelds, Susan Lamb, and Stephen Mawdsley

Welch Medal Committee

This year’s Welch Medal Committee was comprised of Stephen Casper (Clarkson University), Becky Kluchin (California State University at Sacramento), Andrew Simpson (Duquesne University), Elizabeth Toon (University of Manchester, England), and Johanna Schoen (Chair, Rutgers University). This gave us a nice geographical spread and a good representation between smaller and larger schools. Committee members unanimously agreed that the 2018 William H. Welch Medal should be awarded to Cristian Berco for his book From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016).

Early in the fall semester, I contacted all publishers who regularly publish in the history of medicine to solicit nominations and remind them of the criteria for the Welch Medal. From September 2017 through the October 15 deadline, we received sixty-seven nominations. I eliminated five as not eligible because they either did not fall within the publication years specified by the award or they were not history of medicine books (this applied to only one book). In the end, committee members considered sixty-two books.

We followed the criteria and procedure of last year. Officially the committee is charged with selecting from the nominations “a book of outstanding scholarly merit in the field of medical history published in the preceding five years.” We agreed to read “history of medicine and health, broadly construed.” When the question “is this medical history?” arose—it did a couple of times—we erred on the side of including the title in question.

For the first round, each eligible book was read by two readers who assigned it a letter grade (A, B, or C). From there we established a shortlist of all the books that both readers had assigned an A and thus identified eleven books for the second round. All committee members read the books in the second round and nominated their top three titles. Identifying the finalists was easy since three books consistently rose to the top. All of us were very taken with the three finalists but also in almost unanimous agreement of the top title.

Respectfully submitted, Johanna Schoen

Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award Committee

The Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award is given annually to a member of the association who has retired from regular institutional affiliation or practice, with a distinguished record of support for the history of medicine over many years, and who has made continuing scholarly contributions of a distinguished nature.

From a pool of twelve distinguished candidates, we nominate Rima Apple as the recipient of the 2018 Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Apple is professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the School of Human Ecology and the Gender and Women’s Studies Program and the Science and Technology Studies Program and as an affiliate in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics. This award recognizes Dr. Apple’s impressive record of publication and her faithful service to the profession, along with the international reach of her scholarly influence and the enormous inspiration she has provided as mentor to generations of historians.

Respectfully submitted, John Eyler, Wendy Kline, and Elizabeth Watkins (Chair)

Estes Prize Committee

The members of this year’s committee included Marcia Meldrum, UCLA, Chair; Cynthia Connolly, University of Pennsylvania; Stephen Greenberg, National Library of Medicine; and Sergio Sigismondo, Queens University. The committee reviewed a selected group of twenty-four very diverse articles and selected as this year’s prize winner, “Entitled to Addiction? Pharmaceuticals, Race, and America’s First Drug War,” by David Herzberg of the State University of New York at Buffalo, which appeared in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Fall 2017, 91 (3): 585–623. We have no recommendations at this time.

There were a very diverse group of interesting articles this year and the committee members enjoyed their task. Thanks for asking me to chair the committee.

Best wishes, Marcia Meldrum (Chair)

Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Development Award Committee

We received five applications this year. The applicants all came from U.S. universities with renowned graduate programs in the history of medicine. Four of the five applicants received their doctoral degrees from institutions in the U.S. northeast, and one received her degree in the midwest; no applications were submitted from PhD recipients from universities in the south or west or outside the United States.

The call for applications was posted on the AAHM website, in the AAHM NewsLetter, and on Facebook and Twitter. All applicant materials were submitted directly to the chair, who uploaded them to a DropBox folder shared exclusively with other committee members. Our committee developed a twenty-point rubric with five criteria on which each application was judged: excellence, originality, historiographic contribution, promise, and career trajectory. Each applicant received a score from each committee member. During a Skype conference call of all committee members, held on February 21, 2018, we tallied total scores for each applicant, ranked all five applicants, and discussed each of the applicants in turn until we reached consensus on the award recipient.

At the end of our meeting, we discussed the merits and limitations of the rubric. The revised rubric was submitted to council.

Award Winner: The committee is pleased to award the 2018 Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Award to Yumi Kim (Ph.D. Columbia, 2015), an assistant professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, for her project Sickness of Spirit: Medicine, Religion, and Madness in Early Twentieth-Century Japan.

Kim’s project examines changes in medical and religious understandings of madness and caregiving practices in the context of a rapidly modernizing Asian nation, tracing continuities between spiritual and psychiatric understandings of mental illness. The project challenges, in Kim’s own words, narratives of the dominance of Western medical ideas in Japan. It maps a landscape of care that encompasses therapeutic sites ranging from temples to prisons. And it examines the role of gender in mediating men and women’s experiences as both the mentally ill and their caretakers.

We chose this project for its innovative approach to the history of mental illness, the sophistication of its arguments, and its cross-disciplinary perspectives. Our committee members were impressed with the wide range of sources on which Kim draws, her nuanced attention to both medical and social contexts, and the tremendous work she has done to extend the analysis and reconceptualize the focus of her dissertation as she turns it into a book manuscript in which several presses have already expressed interest.

Suggestions for future competitions: Committee members were surprised by the small number of applicants. We recommend that future committees consider promoting the competition more actively on social media; posting and sharing it on H-Net and via popular blogs (such as Remedia and the Points blog, e.g.); and conducting direct outreach to history departments and programs across the United States, especially in regions underrepresented among the current applicants.

We also recommend that the criteria for evaluating applicants be shared from one committee to the next, in order to streamline committee members’ work and in order to provide clear guidelines to all applicants. We recommend posting on the Call for Applicants page on the AAHM website the list of criteria on the rubric (especially originality, historiographic contribution, and project promise), potentially along with a brief description of the listed criteria, so that all applicants have clear information on the requisite components of a successful application.

Respectfully submitted, Elena Conis (Chair), Jethro Hernandez Berrones, Stephen Mawdsley, Alisha Rankin

George Rosen Prize Committee

The Rosen Prize Committee of the AAHM in 2017 included Caroline Hannaway, Chair; Jennifer Gunn; Margaret Humphreys; James Mohr; and John Parascandola. The committee received nominations for fifteen books and one website for the prize.

The specifications for the 2017 prize state that the prize will be awarded to one or more authors/creators of a book, essay, edited volume, museum exhibition, film or other significant contribution to the history of public health or the history of social medicine published or created in the two calendar years preceding the award’s nomination deadline, i.e., during 2015 or 2016. “Social medicine” here refers to historical efforts to heal, relieve, or prevent diseases arising inherently from social circumstances and is intended to be distinct from “the social history of medicine.” In this context, “social” refers to the perspective of the historical actors and not to the perspective or methods of the historian.

The choice of the committee for the prize was the book by Nükhet Varlik, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 (Cambridge University Press, 2015). It was a close race as about three or four books were notable, but after several rounds of deliberation, Varlik’s was the choice. One of the aspects of the book that particularly struck committee members was that the book offered something genuinely new about perhaps the best known public health catastrophe of human kind. The standard histories of the Black Death and continuation of plague outbreaks are shown to be too limited in their scope geographically and epidemiologically. Varlik’s book is a scholarly tour de force offering information on Arabic and Turkish sources, modern microbiology of archaeological DNA studies, the ecology of various plague carrying rodents and fleas, and the development of new concepts, such as “plague networks” and an “empire of plague” to help explain why, where, and when plague occurred in the Ottoman regions.

Next year’s committee will have a different sort of challenge. The idea of awarding the prize to an exhibit is admirable but complicated. Our committee had one suggested exhibit for consideration, but the exhibit had no Web presence nor brochures that a committee could look at. There was to be a scholarly symposium but the idea of recording that would not produce a product that could be seen for months. Plus it is the exhibit itself that should be awarded a prize not people talking. The nomination was withdrawn when it was realized that it did not fit the time frame specified in the prize announcement. I think the AAHM will have to give more specifications on what the product of an exhibit can be that committee members can examine to assess its merits. (I doubt the association can fly committee members around to see exhibits.)

The website that was nominated was a large one involving mentions of disease in the records of individual patients and doctors that the creators thought might allow for historical epidemiology. Such records, however, lacked the population basis that would be needed for substantive analysis to fit the prize characteristics.

The 2017 committee did not have the challenge of a film to examine. The issues of comparing apples to oranges are not going to go away even by dividing up what items are considered in alternate years.

Respectfully submitted, Caroline Hannaway (Chair)

Garrison Lecture Committee

The Garrison Lecture Committee, consisting of Erika Dyck, Jeremy Greene (Chair), Abena Osseo-Asara, Joanna Radin, and Alisha Rankin, met during the 2017–2018 academic year and, after a productive series of deliberations regarding the merits of many fine scholars in the field, unanimously voted to invite Shighisa Kuriyama, Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History at Harvard University, to present the 2019 Garrison Lecture. Professor Kuriyama has accepted the invitation and will present the Garrison Lecture at the 92nd annual meeting of the AAHM in Columbus, Ohio, next April.

Respectfully submitted, Jeremy Greene, (Chair)

Local Arrangements Committee

The 90th Annual Meeting of the AAHM, hosted by Vanderbilt University, took place the first weekend in May 2017 at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel in Nashville. The Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences (ALHHS) met one day earlier (Wednesday) and, as usual, the Sigerist Circle held its meeting on the first day of AAHM (Thursday). For those who were interested, there were Thursday afternoon tours to Meharry Medical College, and to the Nashville City Cemetery and the TN State Museum. Sixteen people signed up in advance for each tour. Bad weather put a bit of a damper on both tours, but I believe participants appreciated them nonetheless.

This year marked the first time that the AAHM came to Nashville (now known as the “It” city), and it will probably not be the last! We had an especially good time with the program’s logo (see the last entry of the report) and conference participants seemed to enjoy the good food and music Nashville has to offer as well. Attendance was about what we expected: four-hundred people registered for the meeting, including twenty-five individuals who registered onsite.

Local Arrangements Committee: We had a committed LAC, co-chaired by Arleen Tuchman (Vanderbilt University) and Lisa Pruitt (Middle Tennessee State University). Daniel Genkins, our extremely able and reliable graduate student assistant organizer, provided invaluable labor and support. We also appreciate the help we received from Susan Hilderbrand and Christen Harper, administrative assistants in Vanderbilt’s history department. And we express our gratitude to the following LAC members, who made it possible for us to plan such a successful meeting: Jonathan Metzl, Laura Stark, Jim Thweatt, Chris Ryland, and Margaret Tarpley (all from Vanderbilt University) and Ashley Poe (Educational Specialist at TN State Museum).

Our wonderful experience would not have been possible without the steadfast guidance and constant reassurances of the AAHM’s stellar secretary, Jodi Koste, and the expert advice and wisdom of Carly Spiewak of the Chesapeake Health Education Program, who served for a second year as AAHM’s meeting coordinator.

Thanks also to previous chairs of Local Arrangements Committees for sharing their wisdom: Mindy Schwartz (Chicago, 2014), John Harley Warner (Yale, 2015), and especially Jennifer Gunn and Emily Beck (Minneapolis, 2016), who always responded quickly and with good cheer to any and all of our questions.

Fundraising: We raised $45,050 from the following donors at Vanderbilt University:

• College of A&S, Dean’s Office ($14,025)

• Dean of Medical Students, VUMC ($12,000)

• Provost’s Office ($7,175)

• Nursing School, Dean’s Office ($4,000)

• Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities ($1,000)

• Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society ($500)

• Center for Medicine, Health, and Society ($500)

• Institute for Global Health ($500)

• Department of History ($500)

• Department of Surgery ($1,500)

• Department of Sociology ($300)

• European Studies ($500)

• African-American Studies ($300)

• Women’s and Gender Studies ($750)

• Personal donation ($100)

We also received two donations in kind: The CME Office at VUMC provided their services gratis. (I believe the AAHM paid about $2,000 for this service in the past.) The Dean’s Office of the College of A&S covered the expense of transporting AAHM members between the hotel and the Student Life Center on Vanderbilt’s campus, where the Garrison Lecture and Reception and the Award Ceremony were held. (The buses cost $4,651.) Additional monies came from the following sources: AAHM membership donation ($1,400), Book exhibit fees ($8,200), Program ads ($2,775) All together we ended up $4,273 in the black. (Income: $153, 605; Expenses: $149, 332)

The funds made it possible for us to contribute $800 toward the graduate student happy hour; themed happy hours, to pay the registration fee for all ten of our graduate student volunteers; and to bring back an event that had long been a part of our annual meeting: the Saturday evening party. (We elaborate on all of these events below.)

The fundraising went smoothly. I was consistently surprised and always gratified that so many departments and administrative branches of Vanderbilt University contributed with such generosity. What has become clear, I believe, is that it is easier to raise funds for our meetings when they are held at private rather than public institutions. This is something that council needs to address—if it isn’t already doing so—at a future meeting.

Program: Jeff Baker and Chris Hamlin, who co-chaired the Program Committee, put together a wonderful program this year. The meeting featured forty-six concurrent sessions with 148 presenters, six lunch sessions with twenty-two presenters/participants, and eight posters. Of the presentations where geographic regions were identifiable in the title, approximately half considered topics related to the United States or Canada; the remaining sessions were evenly divided between European topics and global, non-western topics. Jeff and Chris received 228 abstracts for 149 presentation slots. Of the 149 accepted presentations, 68 were part of pre-arranged panels (26 sessions total). (A full report of the Program Committee for the 90th Annual Meeting, May 2017, is available in the Fall 2017 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.)

We tried something new this year for the lunch meetings. Instead of charging an exorbitant fee for a disappointing lunch, Carly Spiewak arranged with the hotel to prepare “grab and go” style lunches (either a salad or a sandwich) for $12 to $15. People were able to pick up their food and take it to their lunch sessions. I believe everyone considered this a success.

Thursday evening: We took the lead from Yale (2015) and Minnesota (2016) and included a Thursday evening special session. Entitled “Human Enhancement in Historical Perspective,” it began with a screening of the documentary, Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, followed by a discussion led by Michael Bess (Vanderbilt University) and Kim Nielsen (University of Toledo). Unfortunately, only about ten people attended, including the panelists. This marks a drastic change from previous years, when the Thursday evening event was extremely well attended. Future LACs should consider all of these experiences when deciding on a Thursday evening session.

Graduate Student Happy Hour: Again we took the lead from Minnesota and organized a graduate student happy hour Thursday evening from 8–10pm. We estimated attendance based on the numbers who attended in 2016 (40–50 people) and agreed to a minimum charge of $800. In retrospect that was a mistake as only about twenty people showed up. We have no idea why that was the case.

Plenary and Garrison: Better attended was the opening Plenary Session on Friday morning. Our panel, “Zika in Historical, Political, and Global Contexts,” featured Randall Packard (Johns Hopkins), Leslie J. Reagan (University of Illinois–Champaign-Urbana), and Muktar Aliyu (Vanderbilt). We had a full house again that evening when we all traveled by chartered bus to the Student Life Center on Vanderbilt’s campus to hear Naomi Rogers’ Garrison Lecture, “Radical Visions of American Medicine: Politics and Activism in the History of Medicine.” For the second year in a row, the Awards Ceremony followed the lecture, after which we all moved down the hall to the Garrison Reception. Combining these three events seems to be working well.

There were, however, a few glitches. When we first hired the buses we did not think clearly about the impact that rush hour would have on our ability to move people expeditiously from the hotel to campus. Fortunately, everything worked out in the end, but this was largely because of Vanderbilt’s generosity in paying for transportation allowed us to hire additional buses. (This was one of those moments when we were grateful that we could throw money at a problem and, thus, lessen our anxiety.) The other snafu also involved traffic, but this time it was a roadblock that occurred as people filed out of the room where the Garrison Lecture was held and made their way down a short hallway to the reception. Once we realized the problem and encouraged people to abandon the single file and move on into the room, traffic moved much more smoothly.

Themed Happy Hours: The Nashville LAC followed the lead of the 2016 Minneapolis LAC in organizing “themed happy hours” for Saturday evening, 6:30–8:00. We also took their advice and tried to keep all of the sites close to the hotel, although that proved somewhat difficult in downtown Nashville, where demand on bars is fairly high even early on Saturdays. In the end, Daniel Genkins managed to locate four locations; a fifth happy hour took place in one person’s home. Individuals who took responsibility for hosting the happy hours either currently resided in Nashville or were recent PhD. (We were able to give each “host” $100 to get things started.) The themes were: history of nursing, global histories of medicine, race and medicine, public history, and medicine in Asia. We did not track attendance, but we heard that they went well. We would definitely recommend continuing this tradition.

A Taste of Nashville: Two years ago, at the meeting in New Haven, the AAHM did away with the traditional Saturday night banquet because of many years of dwindling attendance; instead the LAC organized an early evening party to conduct the annual awards ceremony and to celebrate the association’s 90th birthday. Last year, in Minneapolis, the LAC did away entirely with the party, instituting instead the themed happy hours. This year we had many discussions about what we should do and were delighted we had the funds to subsidize the themed happy hours and to host an after-dinner party, from 9–10:30, in the hotel. “A Taste of Nashville” provided some local Nashville “tastes” of food and live music. In retrospect, hiring a band was unnecessary and even a mistake. The acoustics in the room were terrible, and it was evident that people were not gathering to listen to music but rather to converse with old and new friends. The band members were extremely upset (they were used to getting more attention) and it took some time and energy to smooth ruffled feathers. Should future LACs be inclined to organize a Saturday night party, we would recommend foregoing the music, unless, as we experienced in Montreal in 2007, the intent is to have a dancing party! (Hats off to George Weisz for arranging that wonderful event!) We estimate that 100–125 people attended this event.

Financial and Operational Decisions: I can’t imagine what it has been like for those who have gone before us and who did not have the benefit of working with a professional meeting planner. I really don’t believe we could have done this without this additional help. Between Jodi Koste, AAHM’s secretary, and Carly Spiewak of CHEP, the job of the chair of LAC has become greatly simplified. Most notably, we did not have to deal with the hotel management. Carly handled all of those negotiations—including the ordering of food. She also ran interference during the conference whenever problems arose. The only input needed from LAC, as far as the hotel was concerned, was to weigh in on the initial selection of a hotel and to attend two site visits: an initial one when the hotel was first selected, and a second one, when the program was being put together to decide where to hold particular sessions. Carly also dealt with the need to find additional rooms in other hotels when, as had happened in Minneapolis, all of the rooms in the conference hotel had sold out.

Venue: The LAC was committed to holding the meeting in a hotel in downtown Nashville so that our members could have easy access to restaurants, the Ryman Auditorium, TPAC, and other attractions. Working with Helms-Briscoe, the AAHM signed a contract with the Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel in 2014, several years before Carly Spiewak began working with us.

While the space and the location worked out well, and the hotel’s lobby area offered an attractive site for easy mingling, I don’t believe Carly found it easy to work with the hotel staff. That I was able to walk around the entire weekend with a huge smile on my face is a testament to Carly’s ability to get the hotel to take responsibility for its mistakes and to protect the LAC, to the extent possible, from the headaches that come with having to pay attention to details.

Registration Desk: The registration desk was open for 28.5 hours over the course of the conference. Daniel Genkins coordinated ten to twelve volunteers (ca. 100 person-hours) to cover the registration desk and direct the loading/unloading of buses for the Garrison Lecture and reception. As mentioned above, we were able to cover the registration costs for all of the volunteers.

We all agreed that we could have handled registration with far fewer people, except during the heavy traffic shifts.

CME Credit: Through the generosity of Vanderbilt’s CME Office, the AAHM did not have to pay for the granting of CME credits. Twenty people signed up for CME credits.

The Logo: This meeting may long be remembered for its unusual logo. The backstory involves a decision we made to hire a local graphic artist, “Monday Bear,” to come up with an “original” logo. We gave him a lot of latitude, simply telling him that the logo needed to have something to do with Nashville. When his design arrived of an astronaut holding the TN flag, we were all surprised (well, I panicked), but then we decided to turn this into something fun. So we ran a contest, encouraging people to send their ideas to the following hashtag: #AAHMLOGO. We received a good number of wonderful entries and chose as the winner Andrew Ruis, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He submitted three entries: “I do mostly global history.” “The American Astronaut for the History of Medicine.” “It took three years to get IRB approval for this research.” We loved them all. The award (which Andrew did not pick up) was a gift bag with a few Tennessee-related goodies and a signed copy of Go for Orbit!, a memoir by Astronaut Rhea Seddon, who is a native and current resident of Murfreesboro, TN.

The moral of this story: With the right attitude, potential disasters can turn into rollicking fun events.

Respectfully submitted, Arleen Tuchman and Lisa Pruitt, Co-Chairs

Program Committee

We are pleased to present the report of the Program Committee for the 2018 Los Angeles meeting. Sincere thanks are given for the hard work, cheerfulness, and accommodating attitude of the committee members. They are Adam Briggs, Janet Greenlees, Laura Hirshbein, Beth Linker, Marion Moser-Jones, Chris Sellers, Jacob Steere-Williams, Dominique Tobbell, Olivia Weisser, and Jackie Wolf. The committee size worked well, neither too large to be unwieldy nor too small to overburden reviewers. We also extend are sincere thanks and admiration to Jodi Koste for her unflagging support, advice, experience, and great patience.

The committee received 282 abstracts comprising 185 individual papers, thirty proposed panels (90 abstracts), and seven lunch sessions. This exceeded the figure for the 2017 Nashville meeting. Particularly gratifying were the number of international abstracts and the number of graduate and medical students submitting.

Eighteen panels were accepted (60%), as were six lunch sessions (86%), and eighty-four individual abstracts (45%). An additional thirty-five individual abstracts were selected as posters. Eleven accepted papers were withdrawn by their authors and replaced from the waiting list. No panels withdrew. In making our decisions, the chairs attempted to create a broad ranging program that included understudied and underrepresented areas of medical history and one that represented a diverse group of scholars.

The final program featured presenters (poster and oral) and discussants from eighteen countries. Of these, 133 were from North America (US: 110, Canada: 22, Mexico: 1). Europe contributed thirty-four (UK: 21, Ireland: 1, Germany: 4, Portugal: 2, Sweden: 3, Norway: 1, Switzerland: 1). Twelve participants were from Asia-Pacifica (Australia: 2, New Zealand: 1, Korea: 2, China: 2, Hong Kong: 1, Taiwan: 1, Japan: 1, India: 1, Kazakhstan: 1).

This year submitters had been given the option of accepting a poster as an alternative to an oral presentation. Of the submitters, 114 indicated that they would accept this option if their abstract was not selected for oral presentation. The 114 included both individual abstracts and abstracts submitted as part of a panel. (See below for discussion of poster sessions.)

Based on our experience, we recommend attention to the following issues in future planning.

Paper Presentations: We were surprised by the number of authors of accepted paper presentations who withdrew given funding constraints. We had been advised by the prior co-chairs of the program committee to have a robust waiting list, and we had to go deeper into this list than we anticipated. The funding constraints are real and may affect future conference planning.

Panel Chairs: As in the past, we depended on members of our program committee and those who volunteered in advance to chair panels. We also used doctoral students, as they needed a conference role to justify funding from their programs. We recommend that future program committees continue to consider doctoral and medical students in this manner. Also, the ability to volunteer to chair panels may not be widely known among the membership. We think this might be published when the call for abstracts goes out.

Poster Sessions: There are pros and cons to the method used this year. On the plus side it meant that we were able to include an additional 35 participants in the meeting, something of importance given restrictions on travel funding nowadays. On the negative side, it meant deciding whether to draw from the waiting list or the poster list to fill cancelations. As it was, to maximize participation, we drew from the waiting list recognizing that this meant some equally good abstracts would be passed over for oral presentation. Additionally, in keeping with the “all or none” injunction for panels, individual panel abstracts on rejected panels were not selected for posters.

Lunch Sessions: The members of a committee charged by the board to look at issues of diversity proposed one lunch session; the program committee felt that this session replicated the intent of one other and it was not chosen (and the logistics of arranging a seventh room meant it would have to be offsite with transportation costs incurred by the LAC). In addition, this committee was reporting to membership earlier in the meeting. In the future, we recommend that if the board wishes a committee to have a formal program role, it should notify the program committee.

Oxford System: The strengths and limitations of the system have been discussed in previous reports. We found 3X5 index cards to be the easiest way to keep track of abstracts and arrange the program. Shared documents (Google Sheets) facilitated coordination as did regular telephone meetings.

Preparation: We would recommend that program committee reports from the last three to five meetings be sent to the incoming program committee chairs.

Panels: The all-or-none system for organized panels worked well and we would recommend keeping it for next year.

Multiple Submissions: A few individuals submitted two abstracts. We would recommend that the call for papers specify that submitters are allowed only one abstract each.

Number of Blocks: There was some uncertainty between the Program Committee and the LAC over the number of blocks on Saturday afternoon. We would recommend that this information be clearly given to both committees at the start of the process.

Responsibilities of PC and LAC: We would also recommend that both committees receive a clear statement of their respective responsibilities. We profoundly thank Russell Johnson and his committee for all the assistance they gave the program committee.

Respectfully submitted, Peter Kernahan and Patricia D’Antonio

Education and Outreach Committee

Members: Eli Anders, Claire Clark, Aimee Medeiros, Marissa Mika, Andrew Ruis (Chair), Jacob Steere-Williams, and Courtney Thompson. The Education and Outreach Committee has focused on three primary projects during the 2017–18 term, in addition to managing the association’s social media accounts:

Creation and Implementation of a Survey on Diversity in the AAHM: The committee drafted a survey, obtained approval from AAHM leadership and the UCSF IRB, and disseminated a survey on diversity in the association and at our annual meeting. Our goal is to collect core demographic and other data about the membership and conference attendees to support the ongoing work of the association.

Organization of a Professional Development Workshop to Be Offered at the 2018 Annual Meeting: The committee organized a free professional development workshop, “Career Trajectories for Historians of Medicine: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars,” which will be offered during the annual meeting. The workshop will feature Elena Conis (UC Berkeley), Michelle DiMeo (Hagley Library), and Jeff Reznick (NLM). Our goal is to organize and host a professional development workshop at each annual meeting for the benefit of the membership.

Development of a Database of North American History of Medicine Degree Programs: The committee began construction of a database of North American colleges and universities that confer degrees in history of medicine for inclusion on the AAHM website. We expect to complete this database in the 2018–19 term.

In the next year, we will:

Continue to develop and refine social media strategy and policy for the association and expand the presence of the association on social media.

Analyze data from the diversity survey and report the results to the association.

Organize a professional development workshop for the 2019 annual meeting (topic to be determined).

Complete other education and outreach tasks as requested by council.

Travel Grant Committee

This was the first year in which the AAHM had not only $7,500 of its own funds (increased to $10,000), but approximately $11,000 of National Science Foundation (NSF) travel grant funding administered through the History of Science Society. This is a blessing in terms of funds, but the NSF application form did not come out until after we already made come tentative decisions about the distribution of the AAHM funds, based on some misperceptions of the NSF process. We had a steep learning curve, making for a very slow, late, and complicated application and award process.

We had a total of forty applicants (14 international travel, 26 US travel) for the AAHM travel grant as of February 2018. Applicants submitted an estimated cost of attendance based on airfare, ground travel, accommodations, and “other costs.” Only four out of forty explicitly included the registration fee under “other costs,” although a handful more included an amount for other costs large enough to have covered registration but did not specify the purpose of their “other” request. Most of the specified “other costs” were for food, childcare, bus or taxi fare. The total cost of attendance ranged from $450 to $3,250, while the amount requested ranged from $200 to $1,000 with the majority asking for $500. (The instructions may have implied that $500 was the maximum.) We had a total of twenty-nine applicants for the NSF, some of whom had not applied earlier for the AAHM travel grant.

Principles and Priorities for Distribution: We had a preliminary discussion about priorities for awarding the funds. Ock-Joo Kim had served on the Travel Grants Committee in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, the committee provided more people with less money, and in 2017 the committee provided fewer people with more money. We hoped to provide more people with something, but not at the cost of failing to give those with the largest travel expenses a meaningful amount. If we could confirm that we would receive the NSF funds, we proposed to divide the $11,000 in NSF money among the sixteen presumably eligible students who had no other source of funding. Since not all of them would need the same amount, we have some NSF funds left over to give something to those who have other sources of funding but still needed more money. Using the NSF for all eligible US students and recent PhDs would allow us to divide the AAHM’s $7,500 among the twelve international students/independent scholars for a total of about $625 each. Again, not all of them needed that much and we might be able to use the remaining to fund those with some source of funding or those not eligible for NSF funds. At this stage of the process, we did not know when the NSF might be available, nor what the process would involve; we assumed we would make the decisions on a basis similar to the AAHM travel grant. If we did not get the NSF funds, we agreed to exclude people with other sources of funds or who had received an AAHM grant last year, then do a lottery for fifteen grants of $500 each, with money going to fund additional grants if a person needing less than $500 was selected. We were conflicted about this and resolved to urge council to find a solution to address the gap between the need and the amount available.

The NSF Process: Once it became clear we would definitely get the NSF money for this conference, the committee sorted the applicants into those who were eligible to apply for the NSF and those who were not. All U.S. students and recent PhDs from an accredited U.S. or international graduate program and any international students enrolled in an accredited U.S. graduate program who were presenting a paper, chairing, or commenting on a session were eligible for the NSF. Two of the international applicants and almost all of the domestic applicants were eligible for the NSF and we asked them to apply for the NSF. A new deadline of April 2 was set for the NSF application and the information about the application went to everyone on the program, not just those who had already applied for the travel grant.

In the meantime, we tentatively allotted the $7,500 in AAHM funds to the applicants, mostly international, who were not eligible for the NSF, calculating that the NSF was enough to cover virtually the full requests of those who could apply for it.

Complications: Then the complications started. Here is a brief explanation of how the NSF worked that will provide context for the problems we faced:

• • The data entered by applicants into the online NSF form is converted into a master spreadsheet showing the applicant’s budget for the covered categories of expenses: airfare, train fare, cost of driving, and registration fee (not including lunch sessions); whether the person has received funds from this grant to attend a different professional association meeting this year (e.g., HSS); etc. A committee member had to “research” each train and plane fare on Orbitz and enter the confirmed or corrected amount on the spreadsheet. Then the spreadsheet checks the individual’s eligibility and produces a “calculated award.”

• • The total amount of the AAHM grant from NSF is also entered. Unless someone is disqualified based on NSF criteria (e.g., having already received an NSF travel grant this year or being more than the requisite number of years beyond the PhD), the spreadsheet assumes that all eligible applicants will be funded up to the specified limits ($750 US and $1,000 international). If the cumulative individual “calculated awards” amount to more than the total AAHM NSF grant, then the spreadsheet calculates an “adjusted award,” prorating each individual award by the same percentage.

• • The History of Science Society, as the principle investigator for the grant, vets the adjusted awards and the intended distribution of the grant funds.

Where things got sticky:

• • The email asking eligible people to apply for the NSF went to all the people on the program, not just those who had already applied for AAHM travel grant. This was fair by the terms of the NSF grant, but suddenly there were a number of new applicants in the pool for the NSF money, which we had assumed would only have to cover the NSF-eligible AAHM travel grant applicants. The number of new applicants diluted the amount of the award available to the original AAHM applicants, but we had tentatively assigned all the AAHM funds to the non-NSF eligible AAHM applicants assuming that the NSF awards would cover the others at a similar level. We had twenty-nine NSF applicants.

• • Not all of the people who applied for the AAHM grant and were eligible for the NSF actually applied for the NSF funds, though they were requested to do so. There were at least seven applicants for the AAHM travel grant eligible for the NSF who did not apply for the NSF. We funded those people out of AAHM funds based on what we calculated they would have received from the NSF. (We didn’t want to reward those who didn’t apply for the NSF, despite the committee’s instructions to do so, with higher grants than they would have gotten from NSF.)

• • The AAHM travel grant and the NSF travel grant do not cover identical budgeted expenses. The NSF does not cover accommodations, food, ground travel (except to get to and from the airport), or “other.” The AAHM does cover accommodations, but did not explicitly cover registration and the “other” types of expenses submitted varied widely.

• • Sometimes the “calculated award” based on the budget submitted to NSF exceeded the amount the individual had actually requested from AAHM. Whether this was because some people perceived there was a $500 limit on funds from the AAHM or had another source of partial funds was not something we could easily assess.

• • Because we were “researching” (vetting) the airfares so close to the actual meeting date, the airfares were probably higher than those people paid if they bought their tickets earlier, and higher than some of the applicants had entered on their AAHM budgets.

• • We were uncertain according to the NSF eligibility description of “oral presentation” whether people doing posters were eligible. Initially, we assumed not, then Jodi checked with HSS and they were included. Some of the poster presenters may not have applied for the NSF because of this confusion.

• • While people were asked both by AAHM and NSF whether they were receiving funds from another source, and NSF asked how much they were receiving, no one supplied that information. The AAHM application asked them to request a specific amount, but the NSF did not—the request was just a calculation based on the expenses entered in all the covered expense categories. So we had no way to determine whether a candidate might end up with more funds than actually needed. In a few cases where someone had requested a smaller amount from the AAHM than the request calculated on the NSF form, we tried to manipulate the input expenses (e.g., registration fee) on the NSF form to make the NSF award more closely match the AAHM request.

• • We had set up ranked priorities and assumed that we could make the NSF awards reflect those priorities, including the possibility of excluding people who had not previously applied for the AAHM travel grant and setting dollar limits that were lower than the NSF’s limits in order to maximize the amount for the most people. However, we could not figure out how to do that in a systematic way. The NSF considered all eligible applicants equally and globally prorated every award by the same percentage as necessary to come out to the total amount appropriated to the AAHM.

• • For future reference, our priorities were as follows:

• • Graduate and medical student presenters (including poster and lunch panel presenters); AAHM members, then non-members

• • Recent PhD independent scholar presenters, then recent PhDs with academic jobs presenters; AAHM members, then non-members

• • Those who originally applied for an AAHM travel grant

• • Session chairs, first grad students, then recent PhDs

• • Anyone who is receiving support from another source in the order of the above priorities.

• • Anyone who received NSF money to attend another member organization’s meeting in the past year and is still eligible for the NSF

What we did: In order to try to maximize the amount of the NSF awards to graduate students and those who had applied first for the AAHM travel grant, we manually leveled the playing field slightly on the NSF form by:

• • Setting the registration fee for all applicants at $125, the grad student rate

• • Eliminating the “train fare” for all applicants except those who had to travel a long distance to a major airport. The NSF form requires the “train fare” to be researched, but we really had no way to do or judge that. In general, people were using this category for transport to and from the airports on either end, but we noted widely varying estimates or claims for applicants from the same city.

• • In researching the airfares, we chose flights on major carriers arriving in time for the Sigerist Circle meeting on Thursday afternoon. These were not necessarily the cheapest flights, but maximized the possibility that someone could take public transportation to the airport, or if flying on a cheaper airline, use the difference to fund ground travel.

• • We manually adjusted the inputs to zero out one person we thought was ineligible, but when that turned out to be wrong, we funded him out of AAHM funds rather than recalculate all the awards downward.

• • The AAHM executive committee graciously added $2,500 to the total available from the organization to help cover those people who were eligible but did not apply for the NSF and the reduced amounts available because of the expanded pool of NSF applicants. We thank the executive committee for doing this—it did alleviate the committee members’ stress levels.

• • The Sigerist Circle offered to pay the registration for several graduate students, and we checked with them to make sure we were not double-funding anyone. There was no overlap.

Recommendations for the future:

• • Keep good records so the committee can easily determine who has had what funding in the past, who is an AAHM member, etc. Membership became sort of a moot point in our calculations, the variable we just couldn’t work in easily.

• • Set some general priorities to guide the committee every year, including the principles of a little for all or more meaningful amounts for fewer.

• • Bring the AAHM travel grant and the NSF into alignment as long as we have the NSF grant. That primarily means excluding accommodations from the AAHM grant, and zeroing out the “train fare” entries on the NSF (unless that is a major form of travel for the applicant).

To compensate for the accommodations piece, which is a significant expense, let there be a checkbox on the AAHM application if the person wants to be considered for an accommodation grant, then give every person the same amount (as we can afford it) up to the amount of their total requested budget.

Similarly, if we can afford it, give every applicant the same amount for transportation to and from the airport (the exception being those who have to travel a long distance to a major city airport, who should include that in their budget).

Ask all applicants how much they are receiving/have applied for from other sources.

• • Consider raising more money for travel grants.

• • Consider whether we want to set a cap on amounts for domestic and international travel, like the NSF does. This might make planning easier for applicants.

• • Require eligible applicants to apply for the NSF along with the AAHM travel grant.

• • Have a fuller discussion with HSS at the beginning of the grant cycle next year about how the form and formulas work, and their expectations or guidelines for their vetting of our awards.

• • Do all applications at the same time and let applicants know when we will announce the grants. We are very sorry that it took so long to let people know this year. On the other hand, thanks to NSF and the additional AAHM money, we were able to award every applicant a meaningful portion of their request.

Note: We had one applicant with a Russian name who was not listed on the program and disappeared when asked to supply a copy of their program acceptance. We don’t know if this was a legitimate applicant who mistakenly thought they could apply for a grant just to attend the meeting, or a new financial scam or hack.

Respectfully submitted, Ock-Joo Kim (Chair), Janet Golden, and Jennifer Gunn

American Council of Learned Societies

(Caroline Hannaway) The 2017 ACLS Annual Meeting took place at the Baltimore Waterfront Marriott Hotel, May 11–13 in Baltimore, MD. In attendance were members of the ACLS Board of Directors, delegates of the constituent societies, members of the Conference of Administrative Officers, and other invited participants.

The Thursday evening session, “Who Speaks, Who Listens: The Academy and the Community, Memory and Justice,” was devoted to exploring the ways that humanities faculty and students at colleges and universities can engage productively and cooperatively with local communities.

The annual meeting proper opened on Friday morning with President Pauline Yu’s report to the council. She spoke of the relation of the humanities, education, and democracy and argued against the “velvet rope economy,” in which goods and services are increasingly offered in distinct tranches, with a more expensive premium product reserved for the more affluent. “The humanities do not belong behind the velvet rope,” she asserted, for they are integral to a holistic education, to social and cultural progress.” She went on to describe ACLS programs aimed at supporting a broad range of humanistic inquiry and strengthening scholarship’s public presence.

ACLS Board of Directors Chair James J. O’Donnell presided over the council meeting.

Nancy Kidd, chair of the Executive Committee of the Conference of Administrative Officers, reported briefly on CAO activities. Two recent publications, Learned Societies by the Numbers, and Learned Societies Beyond the Numbers are the result of the CAO’s data gathering efforts and provide a snapshot of the current state of ACLS’s member societies. Nicola Courtright, vice chair of the ACLS Board of Directors, reported on ACLS finances and investments. Voting members (delegates and board members) of the council approved the ACLS budget for FY 2018.

By vote of the council, the Austrian Studies Association (ASA) was then admitted as ACLS’s 75th member society. Matthew Goldfeder, director of fellowship programs, reported on the 2016–17 competition year. ACLS will award over $20 million to more than three hundred scholars who have applied to more than a dozen distinct programs.

Next on the program was an annual session on “Emerging Themes and Methods of Humanities Research” featuring presentations by and discussion with recent ACLS fellows. This year’s session was moderated by Peter Baldwin, professor of history, University of California, Los Angeles. Noting that fellowships are at the core of what ACLS does, Baldwin suggested that the three fellows presenting their work were not merely representative of what research ACLS funds, but also offered a broad sampling of trends in future humanities scholarship.

Ellen Muehlberger presented her research on the concept of death in late ancient Christian culture. Lina Verchery presented her research on modern Chinese Buddhist monasticism and moral personhood. Candacy A. Taylor presented her research on The Negro Motorist Green Book. The presentations were followed by comments and questions from the audience. Baldwin wrapped up the conversation by pointing out that all three fellows talked about the process of discovering something different and understanding realities we didn’t know existed.

Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), was the luncheon speaker. He touched on UMBC’s focus on diversity in the academy, as well as the history of the institution as it celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.

In the after lunch session, Pauline Yu and Earl Lewis, President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, had a wide-ranging conversation about Lewis’s background, the meaning and future direction of the public humanities, and the role of the Mellon Foundation and philanthropy more generally in the humanities and higher education. Overall, Lewis’s outlook was hopeful, but perhaps not optimistic about the future of the humanities on college and university campuses and in the public sphere. He highlighted the importance of partnerships among different kinds of institutions (community colleges and four-year institutions, for example, and universities and prisons) as well as collaborative approaches to tackling grand challenges with diverse teams made up of individuals with varied backgrounds, including humanists. The term “public humanities,” Lewis noted, has multiple definitions. It could include taking academic knowledge and using visual tools or other forms of dissemination to communicate research to a broader audience; it could also include using theater, museum exhibitions, art, or other media to share larger themes and topics with a public audience.

Lewis closed the conversation by stressing the importance of public support for the humanities. It is a dangerous proposition, he argued, that only private funding should go toward the arts and humanities because it suggests that these are not public goods. Moreover, private philanthropies do not have the ability or the mandate to engage with communities that public agencies do.

The conversation was followed by five hour-long concurrent sessions: “The Digital Dark Age: What Is Happening to All That Work?” “Evaluating Public Scholarship,” “Contingent Faculty in the Academic Workforce,” “Innovations in the Humanities Curriculum,” and “The Annual Conference and the Community.”

The annual meeting concluded with Harry G. Frankfurt, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, delivering the 2017 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture on Friday evening.

The 2018 ACLS Annual Meeting will be held in Philadelphia, PA, April 26–28. Sally Falk Moore, legal anthropologist and professor emerita, Harvard University, will deliver the 2018 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture on Friday evening, April 28.

International Society for the History of Medicine

(Andrew Nadell) For the eighth time, I have the pleasure of reporting to the AAHM about the International Society for the History of Medicine. As the national delegate of the United States, appointed by the AAHM president and council, I first began with the 42nd Congress in Cairo of 2010. Subsequent ISHM Meetings and Congresses, in alternate years, were held in Barcelona, Padua, Mérida in Yucatan, Tbilisi in Georgia, Sydney, and Buenos Aires.

From September 6 to 11, 2017, the Ninth ISHM Meeting was held in Beijing, organized by the Chinese Academy for the History of Medicine and the Chinese Society for the History of Science and Technology, and supported by the venerable Peking Union Medical College.

This series of six gatherings held in parts of the world not previously visited by ISHM proved an opportunity to meet our fellow historians of medicine and physicians interested in medical history. By following its remit as an international organization, ISHM encouraged fellow scholars and gathered new members from many countries.

This year, we return home, as it were, to Western Europe, with the 46th biennial Congress in Lisbon, Portugal, September 2 to 6, 2018. The ISHM was founded in 1921 in Paris.

For someone from San Francisco, as I am, Lisbon is a special city because they have their own replica, albeit somewhat smaller, of the Golden Gate Bridge! It is also very beautiful, built on a bay upon hills with many fine views of the water. The Portuguese are known for their kindness and hospitality, and the food is excellent. There are world famous museums and libraries.

The 46th Congress promises to be a superb event, with historians from North America and Europe, who were not able to attend recently, now coming. The Congress lectures will be held at the Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Reasonably priced, comfortable accommodations are available in nearby hotels.

The organizing committee has done a very fine job, and I urge you to attend. The early September dates were chosen to allow academic historians to participate before the start of the academic year of many universities.

There will be an optional post-congress trip to coastal Oporto, with its medieval section and port wineries, and to the city of Coimbra, with the ancient university founded in 1290 and the spectacular Baroque library, the Biblioteca Joanina,

The website, with full information about the Congress including inscription and accommodation, is: http://www.46ishm.com.

The next ISHM Meeting, in September 2019, will be held in Riga, Latvia.

The newly established Pan American Academy for the History of Medicine will also hold its fourth annual congress this autumn, in Puebla, Mexico, from October 17 to 19, 2018. I was elected a vice-president at the second congress in Buenos Aires in 2016. While the membership is international, including all of the Americas and Europe, the proceedings are naturally focused on Latin America. Papers are given in Spanish and English.

Please feel free to contact me by email for additional information about the ISHM and the Congress in Lisbon, and about the Pan American Academy.

________

President Chris Crenner thanked Joel Braslow, Beth Linker, Paul Lombardo, and Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, members of the council class of 2018, for their service and Margaret Humphreys for her six years of service as vice president, president, and past president.

Motion to adjourn at 4:11 p.m.

Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Inc

The annual business meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Inc., was called to order by President Chris Crenner in Legacy A & B of the UCLA Luskin Conference Center on May 12, 2018, at 4:33 p.m. A quorum was declared.

The minutes of the 2017 annual business meeting were approved as published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 91 No. 3, 652–53.

Jodi Koste delivered a brief secretary’s report. For the full content see the report to council on p. 507.

Treasurer Hughes Evans presented a report on the financial status of the association. The full report to council is found on p. 509.

Jim Bono gave the Finance Committee report.

Jodi Koste reported on the actions of the AAHM Council from its meeting on May 10, 2018. The summary of these actions is found on p. 511.

Sarah Tracy presented the slate of candidates for the offices of vice-president and president; and the council class of 2021. The membership elected the slate of officers and council members unanimously by voice vote.

Andrew Nadell gave the report of the International Society for the History of Medicine.

The membership voted to confirm bylaw changes related to the Rosen Prize and travel grants.

The membership confirmed the resolution passed by council that stated: The American Association for the History of Medicine respects the right of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to organize labor action for improved healthcare and professional working conditions for its members.

A discuss of the association’s membership took place with suggestions offered: to increase the number of members by one hundred by 2025 in recognition of the centennial of the association’s founding; to explore joint membership with allied organizations; to survey conference attendees about their reasons for belonging and attending the annual meeting.

Aimee Medeiros presented the results from the Education and Out-reach’s diversity survey which was followed by a discussion.

Chris Hamlin offered a resolution of thanks for Peter Kernahan and Pat D’Antonio, and the members of the Program Committee for 2017–2018.

Arleen Tuchman thanked Russell Johnson, Marcia Meldrum, Joel Braslow, and Howard Rootenberg, along with the 2018 Local Arrangements Committee for their hard work and wonderful hosting of the annual meeting.

Chris Crenner handled the gavel to incoming president Susan Lederer who declared the meeting adjourned at 5:25 p.m.

Submitted by Jodi Koste, Secretary

American Association for the History of Medicine, Inc. Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Assets-Cash Basis December 31, 2017 and 2016

ASSETS	December 31, 2017	December 31, 2016
Cash and cash equivalents	$95,259	$ 02,497
Investments (see note 2)	$284,938	$238,642
TOTAL ASSETS	$380,197	$341,139
NET ASSETS
Unrestricted	$380,197	$341,139
TOTAL NET ASSETS	$380,197	$341,139
REVENUES, GAINS, AND OTHER SUPPORT (see note 1)
Membership dues (see note 4)	$67,445	$87,070
Investment income	$7,363	$6,329
Contributions	$310	$3,402
Annual meeting income (loss)	$27,302	$(11,761)
Miscellaneous income	-	$113
Net realized & unrealized gains (losses) on marketable securities	$19,021	$10,193
TOTAL REVENUES, GAINS, AND OTHER SUPPORT	$121,441	$95,346
EXPENSES
Publications	$32,960	$35,341
Administrative	$31,397	$23,221
Honors and awards	$16,435	$11,127
Dues to Outside Organizations	$1,590	$8,890
TOTAL EXPENSES	$82,382	$78,579
INCREASE (DECREASE) IN NET ASSETS	$39,059	$16,767
NET ASSETS (unrestricted), beginning of year	$341,139	$324,372
NET ASSETS (unrestricted), end of year	$ 380,198	$ 341,139

Notes
Notes to Financial Statements December 31, 2017 and 2016

Note 1 – Nature of Activities and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies

Organization: American Association for the History of Medicine, Inc., was organized on November 28, 1956, in New York as a not-for-profit membership corporation to promote and encourage scholarly research, writing and interest in the history of medicine. The association is exempt from federal income tax as an organization described in Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Basis of accounting: The organization’s policy is to prepare its financial statements on the cash basis of accounting; consequently, contributions and other revenues are recognized when received rather than when promised or earned, and certain expenses and purchases of assets are recognized when cash is disbursed rather than when the obligation is incurred.

Contributed goods and services: During the years ended December 31, 2017, and 2016, the value of contributed goods and services meeting the requirements for recognition in the financial statements were not material and have not been recorded.

Income Taxes: The association is a not-for-profit organization exempt from income taxes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and classified by the Internal Revenue Service as other than a private foundation.

Management believes that all of the positions taken on its federal and state income tax returns would more like than not be sustained upon examination. The association’s income tax returns for 2017, 2016, and 2015 are subject to possible federal and state examination, generally for three years after they are filed.

Cash and Cash Equivalents: For the purpose of the statement of assets, liabilities, and net assets-cash basis, the association considers all highly liquid investments with an original maturity of three months or less to be cash equivalents.

As of December 31, 2017. and 2016, the association had no temporarily or permanently restricted assets.

Investments: The association reports its investments with readily determinable fair values at their fair value in the statement of assets, liabilities, and net assets–cash basis. Unrealized gains and losses are included in the change in net assets in the accompanying statement of revenues, expenses, and other changes in net assets–cash basis. All gains and investment income are unrestricted.

Note 2: Investments

The association invests in mutual funds. Fair values for investments are determined by reference to quoted market prices and other information generated by market transactions (all Level 1 measurements).

Fair value measurements for investments reported at fair value on a recurring basis were determined based on:

Quoted Prices in Active Markets for Identical Assets (Level 1)
	December 31, 2017	December 31, 2016
Mutual Funds	$284,938	$238,642

Note 3: Annual Meeting Receipts and Disbursements

The association holds an annual meeting, which is handled by the Local Arrangements Committee (LAC). The committee receives revenue and pays most expenses and remits the excess of revenues over expenses to the association. The association than pays some expenses, and sometimes receives reimbursement. The 2017 meeting was held at the Sheraton Grand Nashville Downtown Hotel in Nashville, TN, and Vanderbilt University helped the LAC manage the meeting.

2017 and 2016 income is summarized below:

Receipts	$ 133,790	$ 131,769
Expenses	106 488	143 530
Net income (loss) for Annual Meeting	$ 27,302	$(11,761)

Note 4: Dues

The association received $67,445 total dues in 2017 and $87,070 in 2016. The association sends out renewals for the next calendar year during the current year. Therefore; total dues collected represents dues for calendar years as approximated below:

2017 Membership Dues		2016 Membership Dues
2017 Year	$37,095	2016 Year	$47,505
2018 Year	$30,350	2017 Year	$39, 565
	$67,445		$87,070

Note 5: Functional Expenses

The association had $188,871 in functional expenses in 2017, of which $106,908 were annual meeting expenses. Of the total amount of functional expenses, $176,892, or 94%, was for program services and $11,979, or 6%, was for management general expenses. There were no fundraising expenses in 2017. In 2016, The association had $222,109 in functional expenses, of which $143,530 were annual meeting expenses. Of the total amount of functional expenses, $210,415, or 95%, was for program services, and $11,694, or 5%, was for management and general expenses. There were no fundraising expenses in 2016.

Note 6: Subsequent Events

Management has evaluated subsequent events through April 25, 2018, the date on which the financial statements were available to be issued.

Publications	2017	2016
Bulletin History of Medicine subscriptions	$26,198	$29,979
Newsletter	$6,762	$5,362
Total Publications	$32,960	$35,341
Administrative
Accounting services	$5,760	$4,550
Bank fees	-	$390
Consulting	$ 8,470	-
Insurance	$1,439	$1,483
Membership fulfillment	$10,280	$11,528
Postage	$1,167	$2,139
Taxes	$100	$100
Travel	$668	-
Total Administrative	$31,397	$23,221
Honors and Awards
Engraving	$1,590	$301
Honoraria and cash awards	$3,650	$3,500
Travel grant	$12,480	$7,326
Total Honors and Awards	$16,435	$11,127
Dues to Outside Organizations
American Council of Learned Societies	$1,590	$8,890
Total Dues to Outside org.	$1,590	$8,890
Total Expenses	$82,382	$ 78,579