Cynthia Connolly, PhD, RN, Associate Professor, has been awarded a grant from the American Association for the History of Nursing for her proposal, “A Prescription for a Healthy Childhood: Pharmaceuticals, Parents, Practitioners, and Children in the United States, 1750-2008.”
This project focuses on history and policy issues related to children and pharmaceuticals in the United States. It will trace the pharmaceutical industry since the colonial era as it relates to the pediatric population (birth to age 18 years) including pediatric drug development, advertising to mothers, children, and health care providers across gender, race, and class boundaries. It will also explore the way in which changing ideas about illness causation interacted with the evolving place of children in the United States to foster interest in pharmaceuticals directed toward treating children with life threatening acute or chronic conditions such as heart disease or asthma, drug therapy for children suffering from conditions considered non-fatal such as colic and infectious diseases such as measles, and medicating normative developmental changes such as teething and menstruation.