Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science: Randall M. Packard: FEVERED CITIES with Alexandre White and Julia Cummiskey

The Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science series engages with some of the most pressing public health issues of our time, in a regular public forum catalyzed by a book.

For the first event of the fall semester, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Randall M. Packard to share his book Fevered Cities: A History of Dengue Epidemics, published on August 12, 2025! In this book, Packard explores the complex and evolving history of dengue fever, the world’s most widespread mosquito-borne viral disease, as it comes up against variables caused by climate change, urbanization, and social inequities. Fevered Cities is an essential history for public health experts, historians, and anyone concerned with the intersection of disease, society, and the built environment.

This event is open to the public, and we encourage you to come even if it’s your first time joining for this event series!

Order FEVERED CITIES here

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Randall M. Packard is Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of White Plague, Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa; The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria; A History of Global Health: Interventions into the Lives of Other Peoples; and coeditor of Emerging Illnesses and Society: Negotiating the Public Health Agenda.

Dr. Alexandre White‘s work examines the social effects of infectious epidemic outbreaks in both historical and contemporary settings as well as the global mechanisms that produce responses to outbreak. His book project, Epidemic Colonialism: A Social History of International Disease Response, explores the historical roots of international responses to epidemic threats. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, whose work has been published in journals such as Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Social Science History.

Dr. Julia Cummiskey‘s research interrogates the history of “global health”—what it is, how it came to be, its limitations, and its potential. Her first book Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global, published by Ohio University Press, considers the nature of global and local identities and perspectives at the Uganda Virus Research Institute. Cummiskey is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has been published in journals like Social History of Medicine and International Journal of African Historical Studies, as well as Somatosophere, Isis, and more.