Faculty

Research Overview

 My research falls into several areas: the history of U.S. and international public health; the history of U.S. health policy and politics; the American health left and its role in both domestic and international health policy; and the history of psychosomatic medicine, “stress” research, and biopsychosocial approaches to clinical practice. I am a Contributing Editor (History) of the American Journal of Public Health and Editor of Rochester Studies in Medical History, a book series of the University of Rochester Press. I co-edited and substantially co-authored Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) and, with Anne-Emanuelle Birn, recently published an edited collection of essays, Comrades in Health: American Health Internationalists, Abroad and at Home (Rutgers University Press, 2013). I am also a co-author of The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History, a history of health reform in the United States as seen in political cartoons, which was published by the American Public Health Association in the fall of 2012, and I am currently working on a number of projects including a coauthored history of the World Health Organization.

Selected Publication Covers

Selected Publications

• "Jonathan Mann: Founder of the Health and Human Rights Movement" [with Daniel Tarantola, Sofia Gruskin and Elizabeth Fee], American Journal of Public Health (2006).
• "Andrija Stampar: Charismatic Leader of Social Medicine and International Health" [with Elizabeth Fee], American Journal of Public Health (2006).
• "The World Health Organization and the Transition from 'International' to 'Global' Public Health" [with Marcos Cueto and Elizabeth Fee], American Journal of Public Health (2006).
• "The Public Health Act of 1848" [with Elizabeth Fee], Bulletin of the World Health Organization (2005).
• "Using Medical History to Shape a Profession: The Ideals of William Osler and Henry E. Sigerist" [with Elizabeth Fee], in Locating Medical History: The Stories and their Meanings, eds. Frank Huisman and John Harley Warner (2004).
• "A Role for Public Health History" [with Elizabeth Fee], American Journal of Public Health(2004).
• "George Engel and Rochester's Biopsychosocial Tradition: Historical and Developmental Perspectives" in The Biopsychosocial Approach: Past, Present, Future, eds. Richard Frankel, Timothy Quill, and Susan McDaniel (2003).
• "Struggles for National Health Reform in the United States" [with Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Elizabeth Fee, and Walter Lear], American Journal of Public Health (2003).
• "The Unfulfilled Promise of Public Health: Deja vu All Over Again" [with Elizabeth Fee],Health Affairs (2002).
• "Preemptive Biopreparedness: Can We Learn Anything from History?" [with Elizabeth Fee],American Journal of Public Health (2001).
• "A Century of Progress in Public Health?" [with Elizabeth Fee], American Journal of Public Health (1999).
• "Isaac Max Rubinow and the American Zionist Medical Unit's Mission to Palestine, 1918-1923" [with Shifra Shvarts], Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1998).
• "George Canby Robinson and 'The Patient as a Person,'" in Greater Than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine Between the Wars, eds. Christopher Lawrence and George Weisz (1998).
• "Emotions and Disease in Historical Perspective", in Emotions and Disease (1997).
• Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist [co-edited with Elizabeth Fee] (1997).
• "Mental Diseases," in Companion Encyclopaedia of the History of Medicine (1993).
• The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History (2012)
• Comrades in Health (2013).
• "Alan Gregg and the Rockefeller Foundation's Support of Franz Alexander's Psychosomatic Research," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1987).