Research

My research interests revolve around the production, valuation, and movement of health knowledges to address health inequities, both globally and in the US. My dissertation focused on the translation and adaptation of the community health guide Where There Is No Doctor in India. First published in the 1970’s, Where There Is No Doctor spread around the globe with health social movements and has been translated into over 80 languages. My research explores translations and adaptations in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and English for use in India, and I argue that Doctor’s invitation to adapt content and illustrations to meet local needs propels its global travels. I position this against models of top-down global dissemination and situate the argument at the intersection of critical global health, postcolonial science and technology studies, and sociology of health and illness. Data from this project has been published in Engaging STS (2019) and Metrics: What Counts in Global Health (2016).

As a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health at Drexel University, I have expanded the scope of my research to focus on the movement of knowledges designated as ‘global’ into and within the US. I work closely with Dr. Susan Bell (PI) on a project exploring the experiences and career pathways of physicians who come to the US as refugees. Data from this project has been published in Social Science & Medicine (2021).

My next research project will explore how community health worker programs developed in other countries have been adapted to address health disparities in the US, building on my interest in examining the production and movement of global health knowledges. This research will explore the scope and scale of community health worker programs across the US, and the range of models of community health work these programs are based on.