• DOI:10.1093/IJE/DYM027
• Corpus ID: 19592235

Globalized migration and transnational epidemiology.

@article{Handley2007GlobalizedMA,
  title={Globalized migration and transnational epidemiology.},
  author={Margaret A. Handley and James I. Grieshop},
  journal={International journal of epidemiology},
  year={2007},
  volume={36 6},
  pages={
          1205-6
        }
}

• M. Handley, J. Grieshop
• Published 1 December 2007
• Medicine
• International journal of epidemiology

During the latter part of the 1800s the union of migration and epidemiology first surfaced. In that era the changing shipping patterns that put more people from cholera endemic areas into London as well as the isolated occurrence of two cholera cases among recent immigrants from Germany to London bolstered John Snows belief that cholera was transmitted from person to person. Other studies in more recent times that have focused on migrants from Japan first to Hawaii and then to mainland US provided evidence for lifestyle theories (including migration) for risk in relation to chronic diseases. These and other exceptional studies in the history of epidemiology have focused on migrants and have important insights into the causation of disease in two very different but equally significant ways - through the isolation of migrant communities and through their assimilation to group behaviours in the area to which they migrated. Today in the 21st century travel by millions of travellers (migrants and others) is far easier than in the 1800s. In the case of migrants the widespread accessibility to means of travel and the availability of new technologies for staying connected to home and community of origin has resulted in transnational communities. Although members of these communities may be physically present in only one they often live in two places. Connections via communication technologies also are reinforced in some cases through the rapid transport of food from home to the new community. (excerpt)