Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    Hands-On Career Preparation
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    Alternative Pathways
Sign In
News

5 Professors Join Vanderbilt’s Bid to Bridge Health and Society

By Peter Monaghan August 13, 2012
Jonathan Metzl
Jonathan MetzlVanderbilt U.

While studying for his medical degree at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Jonathan M. Metzl also completed bachelor’s degrees in biology and English literature.

Understandably, he recalls, “pretty much everyone said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

While studying for his medical degree at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Jonathan M. Metzl also completed bachelor’s degrees in biology and English literature.

Understandably, he recalls, “pretty much everyone said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”

Undaunted by such questions, during his medical residency at Stanford University he earned a master’s degree in literature. While establishing a practice in psychiatry, he earned a doctorate in cultural studies from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

That breadth of study prepared him to become, last year, the director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. To cope with swelling interest, the center has recently hired its first five core faculty members.

Some 335 students are now pursuing majors through the center, which has evolved from an interdepartmental program of teaching and research begun in 2006. They are learning about how medical health, policy, and practice intersect with cultural, social, economic, and political forces.

Until now, the program has coordinated courses taught by some 50 Vanderbilt faculty members in subjects as diverse as economics, ethics, literature, ethnomusicology, and obstetrics. The center focuses on undergraduate teaching, in many cases to students headed for careers in medicine or public health. But Dr. Metzl and his staff are venturing into other parts of the university, including its law and medical schools. By his estimate, some 20 percent of Vanderbilt medical students take courses listed by the center.

Around the country, interest is booming in interdisciplinary approaches to health and medicine, says Dr. Metzl, 46, whose own research focuses on the history of psychiatry, race, and gender. Nationwide, he says, medical-school administrators are acknowledging that “the skill sets that doctors need is changing to incorporate more critical thinking, and more social awareness.”

His center’s five openings attracted thousands of applicants, and those took a year to sift through.

Among the successful candidates is Amy L. Non, 30, a molecular anthropologist who in the fall will begin as an assistant professor at the center and in the anthropology department. She will teach, and continue her research into the effects that genetic ancestry and social and cultural factors have on racial disparities in the incidence of hypertension. Since earning a master’s degree in public health and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Florida, she has been a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Population and Development Studies. While at Harvard, she says, “I was concerned I wouldn’t find a department that was bringing together social scientists, physicians, and bench scientists to tackle these kinds of problems. The tradition in most disciplines is that people are trained in one discipline, and then they stay in it.”

Another of the new hires, Derek M. Griffith, 41, believes that by being open to the complexities of health phenomena, researchers can devise better research questionnaires, he says. Mr. Griffith has moved to Nashville from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he was director of the Center on Men’s Health Disparities and assistant director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health. He says the “beauty” of Vanderbilt’s center is that it has “a diverse team of folks looking at things from various perspectives, taking lessons from literature, and history, and from qualitative approaches, and from talking to folks.”

ADVERTISEMENT

The last has proved particularly beneficial, he says. Participatory-research projects by civil-rights and AIDS activists—"efforts that grew organically out of the communities where the problems were occurring"—have influenced both health policy and the provision of care.

Joining Ms. Non and Mr. Griffith as new hires at the Vanderbilt center are three others.

Dominique P. Béhague, 42, has moved from Britain’s Brunel University to become an associate professor at the center. She studies the intersections of psychiatry, reproductive health, and the politics of global health research.

Kenneth T. MacLeish, 33, a recent anthropology Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin and a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, has been appointed an assistant professor at the Vanderbilt center. He studies how wars affect the everyday lives of soldiers, their families, and their communities, the subject of his forthcoming book from Princeton University Press.

ADVERTISEMENT

Laura Stark, 36, now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt, studies medicine, morality, and the modern state, and is the author of Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research (University of Chicago Press, 2012). She has been an assistant professor of sociology in the Program in Science in Society at Wesleyan University.

Corrections (8/13/2012, 9:20 a.m. and 1:56 p.m.): The original version of this article incorrectly identified the photo of Dominique P. Béhague. Also, Jonathan M. Metzl, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, is not the first to have directed the center, as the original version of this article stated. Those two errors have been corrected.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
The Workplace
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Peter Monaghan
Peter Monaghan is a correspondent for The Chronicle.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Photo-based illustration of a mirror on a green, patterned wallpaper wall reflecting Campanile in Berkeley, California.
A Look in the Mirror
At UC Berkeley, the Faculty Asks Itself, Do Our Critics Have a Point?
illustration of an arrow in a bullseye, surrounded by college buildings
Accreditation
A Major College Accreditor Pauses Its DEI Requirements Amid Pressure From Trump
Photo-based illustration of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia obscured by red and white horizontal stripes
'Demanding Obedience'
How Alums Put DEI at UVa in the Justice Dept.’s Crosshairs
Colin Holbrook
Q&A
‘I Didn’t Want to Make a Scene’: A Professor Recounts the Conversation That Got Him Ejected From Commencement

From The Review

American artist Andy Warhol, posing in front of The Last Supper, a personal interpretation the American artist gave of Leonardo da Vinci's Il Cenacolo, realized 1986, belonging to a series dedicated to Leonardo's masterpiece set up in palazzo delle Stelline; the work holds the spirit of Warhol's artistic Weltanschauung, demystifying the artwork in order to deprive it of its uniqueness and no repeatibility. Milan (Italy), 1987.
The Review | Essay
Were the 1980s a Golden Age of Religious Art?
By Phil Christman
Glenn Loury in Providence, R.I. on May 7, 2024.
The Review | Conversation
Glenn Loury on the ‘Barbarians at the Gates’
By Evan Goldstein, Len Gutkin
Illustration showing a valedictorian speaker who's tassel is a vintage microphone
The Review | Opinion
A Graduation Speaker Gets Canceled
By Corey Robin

Upcoming Events

Ascendium_06-10-25_Plain.png
Views on College and Alternative Pathways
Coursera_06-17-25_Plain.png
AI and Microcredentials
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin