2025 Theses Doctoral

Influenza as Recurrent Foe: The Rockefeller Foundation’s War on Influenza and the Politics of “Preparedness” during the Twentieth Century

Parisi, Valentina Estella

This Dissertation explores concerted efforts by scientific experts and the state to control and mitigate epidemic and pandemic influenza risks during the twentieth century. Using historical methodologies, this Dissertation asserts that the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division (IHD) developed core conceptualizations of and strategies for epidemic and pandemic influenza control and “preparedness” between the interwar period and World War II. Within the IHD, the “influenza problem” reflected persistent scientific uncertainties–as related to the causative agent of respiratory illness, influenza etiology, and the nature of influenza immunity–as well as concerns related to epidemic and pandemic control within the nation. Domestic concerns exacerbated following the deadly 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. As an epidemic- and pandemic-prone pathogen, influenza reflected not simply a health threat, but a social, political, and economic disrupter.

Rockefeller influenza research agendas supported the creation of coordinated laboratory networks for influenza specimen collection and population “observation” within parts of the United States, South America, the Caribbean, and Central Europe; these networks transformed influenza science and possibilities for influenza surveillance domestically and internationally. Furthermore, the Rockefeller Foundation spearheaded the creation of multiple experimental influenza vaccines during World War II through collaborations between IHD experts, grantees at domestic universities, research institutions abroad, and the United States military. To Rockefeller leadership, this diverse influenza programming filled a crucial gap in the national security apparatus that could not be adequately addressed by the state during the interwar period. Influenza programming reflected a particular vision of pandemic “preparedness” rooted in the preservation of North American political and economic interests and the anticipation of pandemic crises from certain regions of the globe. This vision of pandemic influenza “preparedness” persisted through the twentieth century with the advent of coordinated surveillance and epidemiological communication networks as led by the World Health Organization (WHO).

This dissertation argues that the Rockefeller Foundation’s diverse framings of influenza risks and expansive laboratory and expert networks directly influenced the creation of WHO influenza programming following World War II. This included the formation of the World Influenza Centre in 1948 and the institutionalization of the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN) in 1952. WHO influenza programming expanded throughout the second half of the twentieth century in the context of the Cold War and multiple influenza pandemics crises. By the end of the 1970s, national and global influenza priorities materialized in the form of “pandemic influenza preparedness plans” and Western experts and governments widely accepted and shaped this “preparedness” guidance. Therefore, this Dissertation directly challenges assertions in secondary scholarship that infectious disease “preparedness,” and by extension influenza “preparedness,” is a Cold War era construction.