Last month, Emily Kaliel, PhD candidate at the University of Guelph, was awarded the Segall Prize by the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (CSHM) at their annual conference held on 27-29 May, 2023. Emily’s paper was entitled: "'Rather Isolated Communities Remote from Medical Aid': Changing Public Health Landscapes in Alberta at Mid-century."
The CSHM established the Segall Prize soon after the death of Dr. Harold N. Segall in 1990. The prize honours this distinguished 20th century cardiologist who was one of the founders of the Canadian Heart Association and was deeply interested in medical history. The prize is awarded to the best student paper presented at the annual conference.
Emily’s paper explores the development of uneven public health care provision for Indigenous peoples and settlers during the expansion of the welfare state in the postwar period at a provincial level. Focusing on two public health programs in Alberta she argues that, as Full-Time Health Units built capacity to provide more robust public health services than the district nursing program at mid-century, the provincial government steered Full-Time Health Units to serve primarily settler communities while repurposing the district nursing program to provide for Indigenous communities.”
“Emily’s work is making important contributions to our understanding of how public health programs were deeply embedded in the settler colonial project,” explains her supervisor, Dr. Catherine Carstairs. “This is an important part of the historical re-visioning of the place we call Canada.”
Emily becomes the third Tri-U PhD student in six years to be awarded the Segall prize. The others include Lucy Vorobej, University of Waterloo in 2018, and Eric Story, Wilfrid Laurier University in 2022.