For African countries during the 1960s and 70s, decolonization marked the first step in a slow crawl toward complete independence. For Western powers and the Soviet Union, however, decolonization presented an opportunity to exert new influence over countries in desperate need of aid, investment, experts, and trade. Amidst the backdrop of increasing Cold War tensions, the US and USSR used foreign aid to pressure development according to either capitalist or Marxist agendas. Thus, sub-Saharan Africa became a battleground of proxy wars and neocolonialism. The Cold War superpowers would back opposing regimes in Angola and prop up, oust, or assassinate leaders in Ghana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania. This disrupted natural political development and created instability and violence, which was compounded by the arrival of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s. AIDS ravaged African societies and destroyed the remaining fibers of leadership. The disease illuminated harsh historical realities as it spread among the conflict-stricken countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of this thesis is to analyze the motivations behind US and USSR foreign aid during the Cold War, understand how their involvement halted the natural progression of pan-Africanism and leadership in newly-independent African countries, and link the resulting violence to the devastation of the AIDS crisis twenty years later. It begins with a look at European colonization in sub-Saharan Africa and traces the legacy of western influence in the region. The paper will then analyze specific examples of the consequences of historical interference, such as in the Angolan Civil War, the Congo Crisis, and the Rwandan genocide. It will introduce the AIDS crisis—coincident with major civil conflict and the end of the Cold War—and reveal the foreign aid response of the international community in the late 1990s and early 2000s, once Cold War-era pressures were gone. Through realizing the continued impact and spread of HIV/AIDS, the objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive view of the modern-day consequences of historical interference.

Significant health inequalities exist between different castes and ethnic communities in India, and identifying the roots of these inequalities is of interest to public health research and policy. Research on caste-based health inequalities in India has historically focused on general, government-defined categories, such as “Scheduled Castes,” “Scheduled Tribes,” and “Other Backward Classes.” This method obscures the diversity of experiences, indicators of well-being, and health outcomes between castes, tribes, and other communities in the “scheduled” category. This study analyzes data on 699,686 women from 4,260 castes, tribes and communities in the 2015-2016 Demographic and Health Survey of India to: (1) examine the diversity within and overlap between general, government-defined community categories in both wealth, infant mortality, and education, and (2) analyze how infant mortality is related to community category membership and socioeconomic status (measured using highest level of education and household wealth). While there are significant differences between general, government-defined community categories (e.g., scheduled caste, backward class) in both wealth and infant mortality, the vast majority of variation between communities occurs within these categories. Moreover, when other socioeconomic factors like wealth and education are taken into account, the difference between general, government-defined categories reduces or disappears. These findings suggest that focusing on measures of education and wealth at the household level, rather than general caste categories, may more accurately target those individuals and households most at risk for poor health outcomes. Further research is needed to explain the mechanisms by which discrimination affects health in these populations, and to identify sources of resilience, which may inform more effective policies.