The Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine

Gary L. Albrecht is a Fellow of the Royal Belgian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Extraordinary Guest Professor of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Belgium and Professor Emeritus of Public Health and of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After receiving his Ph.D. from Emory University, he has served on the faculties of Emory University in Sociology and Psychiatry, Northwestern University in Sociology, Rehabilitation Medicine and the Kellogg School of Management and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in the School of Public Health and in the Department of Disability and Human Development. Since retiring from the UIC in 2005, he divides his time between Europe and the United States. He works in Boulder, Colorado and Brussels, Belgium. He was recently a Scholar in Residence at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (MSH) in Paris, a visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, the University of Oxford and a Fellow in Residence at the Royal Flemish Academy of Science and Arts, Brussels Susan C. Scrimshaw, Ph.D., is currently the President of The Sage Colleges in Troy, NY. Prior to her appointment as President of The Sage Colleges, Dr. Scrimshaw was President of Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She was dean of the School of Public Health, and professor of community health sciences and of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) from 1994 through June 2006. Prior to becoming dean at UIC in 1994, she was associate dean of public health and professor of public health and anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Scrimshaw is a graduate of Barnard College and obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. Her research includes community participatory research methods, addressing health disparities, improving pregnancy outcomes, violence prevention, health literacy, and culturally appropriate delivery of health care. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, where she has been elected a member of the governing council and serves on The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP), a joint unit of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, and the Institute of Medicine of Chicago. While in Chicago, Dr. Scrimshaw was an appointed member of the Chicago Board of Health and Illinois State Board of Health. She chaired the IOM Committee on Communication for Behavior Change in the 21st Century: Improving the Health of Diverse Populations, and served as a member of the IOM Committee on Health Literacy. She is a past president of the board of directors of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Science, former chair of the Association of Schools of Public Health, and past president of the Society for Medical Anthropology. Her honors and awards include the Margaret Mead Award, a Hero of Public Health gold medal awarded by President Vicente Fox of Mexico, the UIC Mentor of the Year Award in 2002, and the Chicago Community Clinic Visionary Award in 2005. Dr. Scrimshaw was raised in Guatemala until age 16. She is fluent in Spanish, and also speaks French and Portuguese.