In 1965, the United States invited thousands of physicians from other countries to fill vacancies that could not be filled with American doctors. While this strategy was meant to be a short-term solution, it became a permanent feature of the U.S. health care system. Today, one quarter of practicing doctors in the U.S. are international medical graduates. Eram Alam discusses the sociopolitical circumstances that encouraged physician migration to the U.S., the enduring consequences of this migration to communities across the country and the challenges that immigrant doctors face in the U.S.
Eram Alam specializes in the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on globalization, migration and health during the 20th century. She is currently working on two book projects. The first, The Care of Foreigners: A History of South Asian Physicians in the United States, 1965–2017, explores the enduring consequences of postcolonial physician migration from South Asia to the United States. The second book, a co-edited volume with Dorothy Roberts, is called Ordering the Human: Global Science and Racial Reason. This project brings together a disciplinarily diverse group of researchers from around the world. Collectively, they explore the malleability and situatedness of race, the work of consolidating racial ways of knowing, and the forces and flows that dictate the movement of racial concepts in scientific knowledge production.
https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/eram-alam
Lecture. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.
Presented by the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
