Reach: Summer 2009

Researchers at CLA's Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) are opening a window onto the pandemic flu of 1918 and how it was transmitted within a specific ethnic community. Their findings may well hold clues to containing the spread of H1N1 (swine) flu.

Using Ukranian Fraternal Association documents ranging from correspondence to insurance policies, the researchers are creating a database that will reveal social patterns associated with the spread of the flu. Health scientists will study the data to see what patterns could be modified in the interest of containing diseases like swine flu.

The documents had been inaccessible to most researchers because they were written almost entirely in Ukranian. IHRC researchers are translating and digitizing records from 1918 to 1920 as part of the Ukranian American Health, Mortality and Demography Project, which is funded by the University's Minnesota Population Center.

Why records from a fraternal organization? Haven Hawley, IHRC acting director, says such groups were often the only institutional providers of assistance for new immigrants. Among other things, they tracked mortality and health, villages of origin, changes in family size, and type of occupation.

The IHRC is seeking a grant to expand the project back to 1911 and across the 20th century.

Read more at http://reach.cla.umn.edu/flu