Sara Ackerman, PhD, MPH, is a medical anthropologist, Associate Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Director of Bioethics and Regulatory Support at UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Dr. Ackerman conducts empirical ethics research using qualitative
methods and public engagement to advance our understanding of how genomics, artificial intelligence and other emerging medical technologies shape the lived experience of patients, caregivers and communities.
As faculty in the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology (UCSF/UC Berkeley), I am committed to making a contribution to knowledge and insight about the interface between health and the harm that arises from that which cannot be strictly called biological. I have published on a range of topics, including ethnomedicine and global health, the politics of medical knowledge, post disaster climate harm, metrics, safe motherhood, social justice, agrochemical industries and academic capitalism.
Louise Aronson, MD MFA, is a leading geriatrician, writer, educator, professor of medicine at UCSF and the author of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Aronson has received the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, and the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award.
Dr. Paul D. Blanc MD MSPH is Professor of Medicine and holds the Endowed Chair in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, where he has been on faculty since 1988. He received his BA from Goddard College (Plainfield, Vermont), where he first became interested in health and the environment, later training at the Harvard School of Public Health (in industrial hygiene), the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, and Cook County Hospital (in a joint Occupational Medicine and Internal Medicine Residency).
Dr. Julia Brown is an anthropologist and bioethicist who examines lived experiences and social value-making around controversial biotechnologies. She is currently exploring the ethics of prenatal genetic technologies, including the emergence of in utero gene editing. She is author of The Clozapine Clinic: Health Agency in High-Risk conditions (Routledge 2022). Dr Brown is an affiliate of the UC Berkeley Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, where she works on community and public engagement strategies regarding prenatal genetics.
Dr. Burke is an affiliated Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine. She is also a member of the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center and Co-Director of the UC-Cuba Academic Initiative. In 2015 she became Chair of Public Health at the University of California, Merced. She has conducted research in Cuba and the U.S. on social and cultural processes associated with chronic disease management, clinical trials recruitment and participation, and disparities in cancer prevention, treatment and survivorship.
Research:
My research is centered on the contextual issues of treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, and related diseases, in socially marginalized populations. My long-term objective is to combine ethnographic and epidemiological research to explore the intricate socio-behavioral-medical issues of medication adherence, access to care and risk taking behaviors, particularly related to drug use and drug users. My work, including collaborations, has been published in JAMA, NEJM, PLoS Medicine, AJPH, JAIDS and other peer-reviewed journals.
Dan Dohan is Professor of Health Policy, Surgery, and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. He received his PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley. His publications address medical sociology, health policy, culture and inequality, and ethnographic research methods. He has written one book, The Price of Poverty: Money, Work, and Culture in the Mexican-American Barrio (UC Press 2003).
Research areas include historical perspectives on the development of modern clinical practices and medical epistemology; the ethcis and values of medical technologies, such as information management systems and telemedicine.
Director of Qualitative Research Benioff Homeless and Housing Initiative, Center for Vulnerable Populations (UCSF)
Michael Duke is the Director of Qualitative Research and the Co-Director of Pre-Doctoral Education at the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UCSF's Center for Vulnerable Populations. He is a medical anthropologist and methodologist, with expertise in qualitative and mixed method study design and analysis. Dr.
