Tuberculosis Hospital Study
Native Alaskan TB Hospitalization Program
Just as private TB sanatoria in the states were being closed and TB beds in public hospitals were being converted to other uses due to diminished stateside active cases, the number of native Alaskans requiring hospitalization continued to rise. The Alaska Native Service Hospital in Anchorage opened in November 1953, but the facility could not accommodate the demand of patients requiring hospitalization.
Congress appropriated $1.18 million for two years to pay for contract hospitalization of Alaska native patients at three sanatoria in Washington state. The first wave of patients from Alaska was admitted to Laurel Beach and Riverton sanatoria in Seattle in October 1954; while the remaining patients were admitted to Seattle’s Firland Hospital a few weeks later.
These three Seattle sanatoria experienced a rapid influx of 200 patients, some of whom knew no English, and many who understood very little and spoke less.
Lantis's Involvement
In 1955, Lantis was contracted to conduct a study to evaluate the Native Alaskan TB Hospitalization Program’s response to this patient group inflow and the effects of displacement on the native Alaskan patients.
In her proposal, Lantis envisioned a study of the “hospital experience and its effects on health care and personal adjustment after the return home, among a group of essentially non-literate people, all reared in a language that none of the hospital staff can speak, with (to the staff) strange habits of eating, body care, ‘curing’ and thinking about sickness and death, and possibly different concepts or values of responsibility, initiative, cooperation, and authority.”
The Arctic Health Research Center was interested in examining the degree of adjustment of native Alaskans to stateside hospitalization, the responsiveness of hospital staff to their new patients, and what health education information and altered perceptions hospitalized patients brought back to Alaska. Additional study priorities included gathering and synthesizing information to assist agency providers in maintaining the health of patients after discharge and to facilitate post-hospitalization personal and socio-economic readjustment.
