The Race + Racism in Contemporary Biomedicine Working Group includes multidisciplinary faculty who study race as an organizing structure of health and medicine from social science, humanistic, biological, and scientific perspectives. We interrogate the role of race in contemporary biomedicine, address pressing questions about health disparities and stratified inequality, and are committed advocates of antiracist praxis in the South.

The Working Group received its seed funding through a grant from GT-FIRE with three Principal Investigators: Anne Pollock, Manu Platt, Lewis Wheaton. It receives ongoing support from the Ivan Allen College and the College of Sciences.

Working Group Members

(partial list)

​Dalila Assis de Sousa, History, Spelman​

Dalila Assis de Sousa is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Spelman College. Her research focuses on Medical Thought on Black Health morbidly and Mortality rates historically. She has focused her investigation on medical journals in the Southern United States and Brazil post-abolition, respectively, 1871-1918 and 1888-1945. Recently, her focus shifted to physicians’ roles in the building of the Portugal’s Colonial Empire in Africa. She teaches a course on "Racism and Sexism in the History of Medicine,"

The course focuses on how scientists and physicians developed specific analyses of Black Morbidity and Mortality since the beginning of the Republic, with its promise of legal protection of inalienable rights to all, and how these were used to justify slavery, then, in post-abolition, to justify denial of civil rights to Black people, and next, post-Civil Rights Act of 1964, to justify limiting, even denying, access to holistic health care delivery models.

​Kristen Abatsis McHenry, Comparative Women's Studies, Spelman​

Kristen Abatsis McHenry is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Women's Studies at Spelman College. Dr. McHenry earned her doctorate in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and holds a master's degree in women's and gender studies from Georgia State University. She teaches several courses including Gender, Health in Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Intro to Comparative Women’s Studies and Women’s Health Disparities. She writes on the following topics: women's health, environment, breast cancer advocacy and social movement organizations. Her recent work focuses on fracking’s harmful impact on the environment and health.

​Kimberly M. Jackson, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Spelman
​
Dr. Jackson is Chair and Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and director of the Interdisciplinary Food Studies program at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She is co-director of a living and learning community for STEM scholars, an initiative whose goal is to improve access to STEM research careers for women of color through professional and social networks and social justice empowerment. Author of "Realigning the Crooked Room: Spelman Claims a Space for African American Women in STEM", Dr. Jackson is a prolific scholar-teacher having mentored more than 40 students, providing them with research experiences in cancer therapeutics and drug discovery.

​Twenty of her former research students have earned advanced degrees, including six Ph.D.’s with 10 Ph.D. candidates (all African American women) in the STEM pipeline, matriculating at tier-one research institutions in the biomedical or chemical sciences. Her robust and active research program focuses on two distinct areas of sustained scholarship: novel therapeutic agents for hormone refractory prostate cancer and the role of minority-serving institutions and women of color in diversifying the STEM pipeline; each with a host of publications, presentations, and funding from multiple agencies. Her work and commitment to STEM excellence have been recognized by several organizations including the Spelman Presidential Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Mentoring. A  Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Jackson has held a research fellow position at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA and, a visiting faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA in the Systems Biology department. She serves on the advisory board for ASBMB Public Affairs program, COACh for Women Scientists and Engineers, and the American Chemical Society Committee on Minority Affairs.

c. Holly Lewis, MD/PhD (Immunology), Emory

Dr. Holly c. Lewis, PhD is a stem cell biologist, public health activist, transgender woman and aspiring surgeon, graduating with her MD in 2019 from Emory University. Dr. Lewis earned her PhD in 2017, studying the immunology of cell therapy, which her lab used to cure sickle cell disease. Dr. Lewis completed her undergraduate at Harvard University, concentrating in chemistry and Romance languages & literatures; she is fluent in Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese. In between shifts with Grady Memorial trauma and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Lewis is organizing with queer arts collectives, community health fairs, and lobbying the state capitol.

Emily Pingel, Sociology, Emory

Emily Pingel is a PhD student in Sociology at Emory University. Her research centers around the social determinants of health and patient-provider interactions. In September 2018, she will begin ethnographic fieldwork in São Paulo, Brazil to explore ethnoracial classification and primary care in a neighborhood setting. Emily received her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Michigan in 2009 and was Managing Director of the Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities before coming to Atlanta to pursue doctoral study. 

Manu Platt, Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech 

Dr. Manu Platt received his B.S. in Biology from Morehouse College in 2001 and his Ph.D. from the Georgia Tech and Emory joint program in biomedical engineering in 2006. He finished his postdoctoral training at MIT in orthopedic tissue engineering and systems biology prior to returning to Georgia Tech and Emory in the joint department of Biomedical Engineering in January 2009, where he has since been promoted and tenured. His research centers on proteolytic mechanisms of tissue remodeling during disease progression using both experimental and computational approaches. These diseases of focus are health disparities in the U.S., but global health concerns: pediatric strokes in sickle cell disease, personalized and predictive medicine for breast cancer, and HIV-mediated cardiovascular disease, which has taken him to South Africa and Ethiopia for collaborative work to find solutions for low resource settings. His work has been funded by NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, International AIDS Society, Georgia Cancer Coalition, and the National Science Foundation. He is also the Diversity Director for the NSF Science and Technology Center for Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS), a joint center between Georgia Tech, MIT, and UIUC. 

http://www.plattlab.com
@DrPlattLab

Anne Pollock, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Kings College London

​Anne Pollock is a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in Social Science and Public Policy at King's College London.  She is widely published on the intersections of race and biomedicine – most notably her first book, Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference (Duke 2012), which tracks the intersecting discourses of race, pharmaceuticals, and cardiovascular disease in the United States from the founding of cardiology to the controversial approval of BiDil for heart failure in “self-identified black patients.”

Deboleena Roy, Women's Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology, Emory University

Deboleena Roy is Chair of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and holds a joint faculty appointment in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. She received her PhD in reproductive neuroendocrinology and molecular biology from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto. Her fields of interest include feminist theory, feminist science and technology studies, neuroscience, molecular biology, postcolonial theory, and reproductive justice movements. Her goal is to create feminist practices that can contribute to scientific inquiry in the lab.

Renee M. Shelby, History & Sociology, Georgia Tech

Renee Shelby is a PhD candidate in the School of History and Sociology and a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow. She is an applied sociologist with research experience in gender violence, technology, and law. She is currently a co-PI on a National Institute of Justice grant to study the sex and labor trafficking experiences of homeless youth in Atlanta. She also supports local and national non-profits conduct research on trafficking and the commercial sex market. In her spare time, she is committed to finding ways to bring art and public sociology together.

Jennifer Singh, History & Sociology, Georgia Tech

​Jennifer Singh is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech. Her research is informed by the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and medicine studies (ST&MS), which views science and technology as the products of particular social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Within this framework, she investigates how material conditions and cultures shape scientific inquiry as well as the politics and social consequences of biomedical knowledge and technologies. Her primary research uses qualitative methods, which is combined with her expertise in molecular genetics, public health, and sociology. The scope of her current research examines intersectional and structural inequalities that shape disparities to autism diagnosis and services.

Lewis Wheaton, Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech

Lewis A. Wheaton, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. He has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. Since his arrival at Georgia Tech in 2008, he has been the Director the Cognitive Motor Control Lab, which has an overall focus on understanding neurophysiological processes in upper limb motor control. The specific goal of his research is to focus on rehabilitation in upper limb amputees through a deeper understanding of the relationship of neurophysiology of motor learning and prosthesis adaptation.  He is also actively involved in rehabilitation policy and management within the state of Georgia, as a Governor-appointed member of the State Rehabilitation Council, a Congressionally mandated council that oversees the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency. He serves as Co-Director of Race in Contemporary Biomedicine Working Group at Georgia Tech. Dr. Wheaton received his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park in Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences and his B.S. in Biology from Radford University. 

Melissa Creary, Institute for Liberal Arts, Emory; Public Health, Michigan  
Na'Taki Osborne Jelks, Public Health, Agnes Scott
Regan Lawson, Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech
Mona Phillips, Anthropology and Sociology, Spelman
Abigail Sewell, Sociology, Emory