Our mission statement, as stated on the home page of our Spirit of 1848 website, is as follows: “The Spirit of 1848 is a network of people concerned about social inequalities in health. Our purpose is to spur new connections among the many of us involved in different areas of public health, who are working on diverse public health issues (whether as researchers, practitioners, teachers, activists, or all of the above), and live scattered across diverse regions of the United States and other countries. In doing so, we hope to help counter the fragmentation that many of us face: within and between disciplines, within and between work on particular diseases or health problems, and within and between different organizations geared to specific issues or social groups. By making connections, we can overcome some of the isolation that we feel and find others with whom we can develop our thoughts, strategize, and enhance efforts to eliminate social inequalities in health.”

At our Spirit of 1848 website, we provide a list of selected and notable events around 1848. Together, they capture the cross-cutting themes of health injustice and fighting for health justice, involving many types of social, economic and political injustice within and between countries, that are at the heart of the work of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus.

Information about the sessions that the Spirit of 1848 organizes for the annual American Public Health Association meeting and our detailed reportbacks on these sessions (starting in 1994 through the present) can be accessed at the Spirit of 1848 website (under the “APHA activities” tab).

As stated at our Spirit of 1848 website:

“The Spirit of 1848 e-mail community serves an activist network of people concerned about social inequalities in health, in the US and other countries … We welcome posting on social justice & public health that provide:

• information (e.g. about conferences or job announcements or publications relevant to and making explicit links between social justice & public health), and
• substantive queries or comments directly addressing issues relevant to and making explicit links between social justice and public health.

Please do not post messages that are ONLY about social justice/political issues or ONLY about public health issues that do not explicitly connect issues of social justice & public health.”

TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE SPIRIT OF 1848 LISTSERVE send an email to spiritof1848+subscribe@googlegroups.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject line.