Faculty

Research Overview

Interests: History of Medicine and Health Policy

Mical Raz, MD, PhD, MSHP, completed her medical training at Tel Aviv University, from where she also received a PhD in history of medicine. Before moving to the US for a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, she worked at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and volunteered with Physicians for Human Rights. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital in 2015, followed by a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

She is also a practicing hospitalist at URMC at Strong Memorial Hospital, and is board certified in internal medicine. She is the author of four books: The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery (University of Rochester 2013), which was awarded the Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Career Development Award; What's Wrong with the Poor? Race, Psychiatry and the War on Poverty (UNC 2013), and Abusive Policies: How the American Child Welfare System Lost its Way (UNC 2020). Her fourth book examining the 1990s turn to adoption in child welfare reform will be published in 2026. She has published extensively on the imperative to protect children and families from coercive child welfare intervention, and the harms of conflating poverty with neglect. A sought-after speaker, Raz has lectured widely on the unintended consequences of our child protective interventions and has been invited to testify before different legislative bodies primarily on the topic of mandated reporting.

Selected Op-Eds and Popular Writing

• Raz M, “ Family Separation Doesn’t Just Happen at the Border,” Made By History, Washington Post, January 30, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/30/family-separation-doesnt-just-happen-border/
• Raz, M “What We Get Wrong About the Poverty Gap In Education,” Made by History, Washington Post, July 2, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/07/02/what-we-get-wrong-about-the-poverty-gap-in-education/
• Raz, M “More Mandatory Reporting Won’t Keep Children Safe From Predators” Made by History, Washington Post, May 1 ,2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/05/01/more-mandatory-reporting-wont-keep-children-safe-from-predators/
• Raz, M and Doroshow, D. “Wordsworth Case Shows it's Time to Rethink 'Treatment' for Juveniles, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 3, 2016. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20161103_Commentary__Wordsworth_case_shows_it_s_time_to_rethink__treatment__for_juveniles.html
• Raz, M. “DHS Must Rethink Care of Children and Families”, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 2016. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160916_Commentary__DHS_must_rethink_care_of_children_and_families.html

Graduate Research Fields

I offer the following fields for graduate research: History of Psychiatry, History of Public Health, Child Welfare. For more information on our MA and PhD programs, see our graduate program page.

I am accepting new graduate student advisees for our MA and PhD programs.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• HIST 203:  Raising America’s Future: Childhood, Health and the Formation of American Social Policy
• HIST 242/242W:  Unequal, Unjust: 100 Years of Racism in American Public Health
• HIST 373W/473:  Politics and Policies in the U.S. Health Care System
• HIST 374W/474:  Pandemics, Politics and Policies in the US, 1918-2020
• PHLT 116:  Introduction to the U.S. Health System

Selected Publications

• Raz, M. Gupta-Kagan, J and Asnes, AG “THC Ingestions and Child Protective Services: Guidelines for Practitioners", Journal of Addiction Medicine, 2025 Jan 3. doi: 10.1097/ADM.0000000000001441.
• Raz, M. Gupta-Kagan, J and Asnes, AG. “Should I Call Child Protection?—Guidelines for Clinicians” JAMA Pediatrics. September 2024;178;(11):1095-1096.
• Raz, M. Gupta-Kagan, J and Asnes, AG. “I am the Child Abuse Physician:” Disclosure is an Important Component of Ethical Practice, JAMA Pediatrics. 2024 Jul 1;178(7):641-642.
• Raz, M. and Edwards, F. Termination of Parental Rights Should Not be Seen as a Proxy for Child Abuse. Social Work, 2023 Dec 23;69(1):109-112. doi: 10.1093/sw/swad047
• Dorfman, D. Raz, M and Berger Z. Physicians’ Refusal to Wear Masks to Protect Vulnerable Patients, JAMA Health Forum, 2023;4(11):e233780.
• Edwards, F. Roberts, S. Raz, M. Kenny, K. Lichtenstein, M and Terplan, M. Medical professional reports and child welfare system infant investigations: an analysis of National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data, Health Equity. Oct 2023.653-662. http://doi.org/10.1089/heq.2023.0136
• Raz, M. Gupta-Kagan, J and Asnes, AG, “Using Child Abuse Specialists to Reduce Unnecessary Child Protective Services Reports and Investigations,” JAMA Pediatrics, 2023 Oct 9. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.3676. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37812436.
• Edwards, F., Fong K., Copeland V., Raz M and Dettlaff, A. “Administrative Burdens in Child Welfare Systems” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences September 2023, 9 (5) 214-231.