Keith Wailoo: framing health challenges through a historical lens

Abstract

While growing up in New York City, NY, USA, in the 1970s, Keith Wailoo could not avoid noticing giant billboard advertisements promoting menthol cigarettes. “I was surrounded by an aggressive promotion of menthol tobacco aimed at Black Americans in urban areas”, says Wailoo, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, NJ, USA. The saga of menthol tobacco is documented in Wailoo's book Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette. This work neatly crystallises his position as a historian whose career has addressed issues of race, ethnicity, and identity, and how they intersect with health and health policy. “The story of menthol tobacco is similar to that of opioid addiction, with two industries whose aggressive and successful marketing of their core products—menthol tobacco and oxycodone, respectively—has led to public health calamities. One message of my work is to show how such markets are nurtured by hidden influencers. Telling that story is an important part of how we hold these industries to account”, Wailoo says.