Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0000-8639-8838

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP)

Reader 1

William Ascher

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Zoe A Spinelli Schellenberg

Abstract

The Amazon Basin faces a compounding infectious disease crisis driven by climate change, anthropogenic disruption, and structural neglect, yet has received insufficient attention relative to the scale and urgency of the problem. This thesis examines infectious disease across the Amazon Basin, with particular attention to malaria, dengue, and tuberculosis, arguing that a fundamental mismatch has emerged between a rising disease burden and a contracting public health response capacity. Through analysis of disease dynamics, intervention gaps, and the fracturing public health financing architecture of the region, it finds that the communities most exposed, Indigenous and rural populations, are simultaneously the least served by existing health systems and financing mechanisms. Meaningful progress requires not new frameworks, which largely already exist, but commensurate political will, sustained financing designed to build rather than substitute domestic capacity, and data infrastructure capable of capturing the subnational realities that national aggregates consistently obscure.

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