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Arachu Castro, PhD, MPH

  

                       

 

  

Arachu Castro, Ph.D., MPH, is Assistant Professor of Social Medicine in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Project Manager for Mexico and Guatemala at Partners In Health, and Medical Anthropologist in the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Her major interests are how social inequalities are embodied as differential risk for pathologies common among the poor and how health policies may alter the course of epidemic disease and other pathologies afflicting populations living in poverty. As a medical anthropologist trained in public health, she works mostly in infectious disease and sexual and reproductive health in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has worked in Mexico, Argentina, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Colombia, and is expanding her research to Brazil and other countries through the Latin American and Caribbean Prenatal Testing Initiative for HIV and Syphilis, developed in collaboration with UNICEF, UNAIDS, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the Center for International Cooperation on HIV/AIDS of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. The Initiative aims to scale up screening and diagnostic testing of HIV, syphilis, and other sexually transmitted diseases during pregnancy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dr. Castro teaches social medicine at Harvard Medical School and has previously taught in Spain, Argentina, France, Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. At the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, she serves on its Policy Committee and is Co-Director of the Cuban Studies Program and Co-Chair of the Committee on Social Policy in Latin America.

Dr. Castro has been actively involved in designing several international health policy documents on tuberculosis, AIDS, and access to health care in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization, such as The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2001), Scaling Up Health Systems to Respond to the Challenge of HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 2003, 100 pp.), and Barrio Adentro: Derecho a la salud e inclusión social en Venezuela [Barrio Adentro: Right to health and social inclusion in Venezuela] (Pan American Health Organization, 2006) of which she was co-author and editor.

Dr. Castro is a member of the Steering Committee on Social, Economic, and Behavioral Research at the UN Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and has served on the WHO Team on Development of Appropriate Research Strategies for Scale Up of Antiretroviral Therapy in Resource-Constrained Settings (Department of HIV/AIDS and TDR), on the Scientific Working Group on Tuberculosis (TDR), and on the Public Health Watch International Advisory Board (Open Society Institute). At the Society for Medical Anthropology, Dr. Castro was the Secretary-Treasurer (2003-2006) and chair of the Critical Anthropology of Health Caucus (1998-2002). She is on the editorial boards of PLos Medicine, PLoS ONE, and the Open Health Services & Policy Journal.

Dr. Castro received her Ph.D. in Ethnology and Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Barcelona, a Masters in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health, and a professional degree in Nutrition from the Polytechnic Institute of Barcelona. She is the recipient of the 2005 Rudolf Virchow Award of the Critical Anthropology of Health Caucus of the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Dr. Castro has published a book on social and nutritional anthropology (Saber bien: Cultura y prácticas alimentarias en la Rioja, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos 1998), an edited volume on medical anthropology (Unhealthy Health Policy: A Critical Anthropological Examination, Altamira Press 2004) and several articles in medical, public health, and anthropology journals. Some of her recent publications include:

 

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