![Matthew Davidson Matthew Davidson](https://www.ams-inc.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Matt-Davidson-crop-e1614195057387.jpg)
Health under occupation: Haitian encounters with U.S. imperial medicine, 1915-1934
Matthew Davidson
Award: 2020 Doctoral Completion Award
Institution : University of Miami
From 1915 until 1934, the United States militarily-occupied Haiti. This project examines that occupation and the multiple ways it impacted Haiti’s public health. The work considers how and why U.S. Americans acted on matters of health, what such U.S.-led public health activities meant for the Caribbean country, and how Haitians, in turn, both engaged with and contested the occupation project. It challenges the still-prevailing occupation-era claim that the U.S. had greatly improved health conditions in Haiti and that the health interventions were widely appreciated by the Haitian people, neither of which were necessarily true.