First, take your time and explore the timeline. We encourage you to use our curriculum. It is designed to support conversations between you and the people around you, to help keep us awake to the fact that these are not isolated facts but are stories about real people, about life and death and illness.
Second, share it. And when you share it, make a commitment to be intentional in how you share it. If you are posting it on social media, reach out to some of those who engage with your post or who forward it on, and consider discussing what you are learning about together. Do this in order to not turn the lives on this timeline into data bytes that are just spread without care.
Third, expand it. If you see gaps or opportunities for data points that may be missing from this timeline — regarding frontline interventions, hospital strikes, vaccine development timeline points, anything — please send it to us through our contact form or send it to info (at) healinghistoriesproject.com. Submission of data is not a guarantee that it will be included. Be clear if you are sending us a personal story or something you can source. If you want to share a personal story, please look at the section of this website about COVID-19 oral history projects run by other people and organizations. For this timeline, if you are sharing data, please include a reliable source for the data, in order for us to include it on the timeline. Your help will make it grow.
Fourth, tell us how you are using this. We want to know who you are, how and why you are using this. Please don’t be invisible but let us know your story. Here is a brief survey that will help us learn about you, learn how you are using this, and stay connected as the timeline project shifts and changes. This means we will send you updates and further information as this timeline updates and other timelines or related projects roll out. If you haven’t filled it out elsewhere on this site, please let us know something about you now.
And finally, make a donation to pay for our labor and to support ongoing work. We have spent ten years working on research and building towards the development of a larger timeline of the evolution of the medical industrial complex, without outside funding. We need your support to continue building the timeline, building curricula and connecting the work with other work that is happening. If this work is useful to you, we need your support.
Access
Below are tips on how to best view the timeline:
This timeline is optimized for viewing on a computer or a large screen reader. If you are using a computer, you can move one timeline point at a time by clicking the left and right navigation arrows on left and right side of the timeline. You can move through numerous dates at once by clicking and dragging the color categories or the months at the bottom, from side to side. If you are using a smart phone, you can use the right and left navigation arrows on the timeline as above. You can also move the timeline by using your finger to hold and drag the color categories or the months at the bottom of the timeline, from side to side.
We have organized our data to try and make it more accessible. Some of the design decisions we made include:
- Breaking the data down into categories
- Spelling out acronyms for text reader access
- Looking for color and light combinations that increase viewing access
- Identifying visuals that enhance the text
As we continue to build our work, we are continuing to expand our disability justice practices. In particular, our goal is to make this material accessible across experience and need. Feel free to reach out to us with any observations or suggestions that will help us to build this into a site that is accessible for you. With each website update, we will include increased access updates.
Sources
To find the source references for the timeline, check out this document. It’s a view only spreadsheet that shows the timeline fact points in linear order. The same information on the visual is available on this spreadsheet. On the right is a hyperlink to the original source.