Merlin Chowkwanyun, PhD, MPH

  • Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences

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Overview

Merlin Chowkwanyun's work centers on the history of community health; environmental health regulation; racial inequality; and social movement/activism around health.

They just finished a book called All Health Politics is Local: Battles for Community Health in the Mid-Century United States, which will be published by UNC Press. They are working on another book now that introduces and re-assesses social determinants approaches to health, to be published by W.W. Norton.

Chowkwanyun is also the PI (co-PI David Rosner) on a recent National Science Foundation Standard Research Grant for ToxicDocs.org, a depository of millions of pages of once-secret documents on industrial poisons. They teach courses on health advocacy and mixed methods, and in the CORE, co-teaches the history module.

They are most proud of the three teaching awards from aMailman for Excellence in Teaching, Innovation in Teaching, and teaching in the CORE. They are a huge fan of the New York Liberty, the UConn Huskies (women's only), and sometimes, the Lakers.

Academic Appointments

  • Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences

Credentials & Experience

Education & Training

  • BA, 2005 Columbia University
  • MPH, 2012 University of Pennsylvania
  • PhD, 2013 University of Pennsylvania

Honors & Awards

2018 Innovation in Teaching Award, Mailman School of Public Health

2017 Excellence in Teaching Award, Mailman School of Public Health

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2013-2015)

Research

Research Interests

  • Biostatistical Methods
  • Community Health
  • Environmental Health
  • Healthcare Policy
  • History and Ethics

Selected Publications

"Health, Social Reform, and Medical Schools - The Training of American Physicians and the Dissenting Tradition," New England Journal of Medicine 381 (November 7, 2019)

"Racial Health Disparities and Covid-19 — Caution and Context," New England Journal of Medicine 383 (July 16, 2020)

Biocitizenship on the Ground: The Medical Governance Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s in Kelly Happe, Jennell Johnson, Marina Levina, eds., Biocitizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2018)

Cleveland vs. the Clinic: The 1960s Riots and Community Health Reform. American Journal of Public Health 101(November 2018).

'Precision' Public Health: Between Novelty and Hype, New England Journal of Medicine, e-pub advanced print DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1806634 (with Ronald Bayer and Sandro Galea)

"The Neurosis That Has Possessed Us": Political Repression in the Cold War Medical Profession, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 73, no. 3 (July 2018)

The War on Poverty Health Legacy: What It Was and Why It Matters, Health Affairs 37, no. 1 (January 2018)

The Strange Disappearance of History in Racial Health Disparities Research, Du Bois Review 8, no. 1 (2011)

Race, Class, Crisis: The Discourse of Disparity and its Analytical Discontents,Socialist Register 48, no. 1 (2012) (with Adolph Reed Jr.)

The New Left and Public Health: The Health Policy Advisory Center (Health/PAC), Community Organizing, and the Big Business of Health (1967- 1975), American Journal of Public Health 101, no. 2 (Feburary 2011)