Population Contact and the Spread of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in the Central Subarctic

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This research explores factors that influenced the death toll from the 1918 influenza epidemic in several Aboriginal communities in the central Canadian Subarctic. The project uses the methods of mathematical epidemiology to explore how human mobility carries diseases from place to place, and also how mobility and other factors influence mortality within a community, once the disease has arrived. Specific questions include the effects of seasonal and between-community differences in aspects of social life, such as travel patterns, population size and density, responses to the epidemic (e.g., quarantine), and winter-time settlement structure in conjunction with fur-trapping activities. The project builds on previous work of the co-investigators on the 1918 influenza epidemic and other infectious disease epidemics in the Americas (Herring) and on modeling the geographic spread of infectious diseases (Sattenspiel). It combines strengths in both quantitative methodology and theory and data-oriented ethnohistorical analysis and will lead to new epidemiological models that incorporate more realistic structures within which humans interact. These models can be adapted for studying other diseases in other communities. The project will enable assessment of the use of mathematical modeling methods to complement traditional demographic, ethnohistorical, and epidemiological analyses of historic and contemporary populations.