I have been a faculty member in the School of Nursing and Health Studies since 2013. I also hold adjunct faculty status in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington Seattle. I come to UWB from Columbia University in New York City, where I completed my PhD in Sociomedical Sciences from the Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to beginning my graduate work, I worked with a program supporting community-based responses to HIV in South Africa.

All of my work revolves around a simple premise: that broadening the representation, voice, recognition, and participation of people in health systems makes those systems better and builds social and health equity. I embed this through all of my teaching by using innovative, participatory, accessible and high-impact pedagogies. These approaches focus on helping students develop both real-world skills as well as practice critical thinking and reflection about complex contemporary health topics. In the classroom, we accomplish this through: community-engaged and -partnered teaching, both locally and with international collaborators; active learning with real-world data and case studies; using innovative media and diverse sources of information; game- and simulation-based learning; and building our sense of community and understanding of ourselves through meaningful engagement and reflection.

Courses taught:

BHS 510: Health Policy, Systems, and Advocacy

BHS 302: Social Dimensions of Health

BHLTH 423: Global Health: Critical Perspectives

BHLTH 412: Stories That Matter: Narratives of Illness and Healing

BHLTH 301: Global Health Practice: Systems, Places and People

BHLTH 201: Introduction to Global Health

BHLTH 199: Understanding Global Health Through Film

DCX: Getting Through It, Together: Collective Care

For nearly two decades, my work has examined how social, political, technological, and cultural forces shape the health of patients and populations. I use publicly engaged, innovative, and collaborative approaches in researching and teaching these topics. My research has had considerable impact, producing publicly-engaged work that shapes conversations about healthcare, politics, rights and inequities across diverse global settings.

Much of my early work used ethnographic approaches to study the social, political and health impacts of global health interventions and policies. My first book monograph, Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho, described how externally-led efforts to rapidly “scale-up” HIV treatment programs in Lesotho reinforced a ‘politics of recipiency’ that imperiled fragile democratic gains and fueled citizen trust in public health systems. A second domain of my research concerns patients’ use of digital technologies in health care financing, and what impacts this has for patient care and health equity. Starting in 2014, I was one of the first researchers to examine the health equity implications of the use of crowdfunding platforms for health needs. My book, Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), draws on ethnographic and quantitative research and digital humanities to explore how crowdfunding for healthcare amplifies and normalizes health inequities against the backdrop of organized abandonment in the US. My more recent work focuses on patients’ use of digital technologies to navigate complex and inequitable health systems. I am currently leading community-based research to explore how patients with complex chronic illness and disabilities use technology to navigate and manage care. And most recently, as a 2025 Carnegie Fellow, I will be working on a new project called Islands of Solidarity, which aims to help Americans find common ground, move beyond polarization, and build solidarity around protecting the public’s health.

My work has appeared in top public and global health journals (American Journal of Public Health, The Lancet, PLOS One, Globalization and Health) as well as top interdisciplinary journals (Social Science & Medicine, Public Health Ethics, Sociology of Health and Illness, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Journal of Philanthropy). In addition to numerous journal articles, I have written two solo-authored books, co-edited two additional books, and co-edited four special journal issues. I also write for public news outlets, including Scientific American, the Seattle Times, and the Washington Post, and routinely engage with the media regarding my research.