Global Health Colloquium

Helena Hansen, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, New York University

Lunch to be served at 11:45 am.

Helena Hansen earned an MD and a PhD in cultural anthropology as part of Yale University’s NIH funded Medical Scientist Training Program. She is a joint-appointed assistant professor of anthropology and psychiatry at New York University, and a research psychiatrist at the New York State Office of Mental Health's Nathan Kline Institute. During graduate school she completed fieldwork in Havana on Cuban AIDS policy, in urban Connecticut on harm reduction and needle exchange, and in Puerto Rico on faith healing in evangelical Christian addiction ministries founded and run by self-identified ex-addicts. Dr. Hansen’s work has been published in both clinical and social science journals ranging from the Journal of the American Medical Association and Health Affairs to Social Science and Medicine Culture, and Medical Anthropology.

After graduate school, Dr. Hansen completed a clinical residency in psychiatry at NYU Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital, during which she also undertook an ethnographic study of the introduction of new addiction pharmaceuticals. As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation fellow, she began work on a feature length visual documentary based on this work, “Managing the Fix,” which is now in post-production. She is also leading a national movement for training of clinical practitioners to address social determinants of health, which she and co-leader RWJ Clinical Scholar Jonathan Metzl call "Structural Competency."  She is the recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Investigator Award, Kaiser Permanente Burche Minority Leadership Award, a NIDA K01 Award, a Mellon Sawyer Seminar grant, and the American Association of Directors of Psychiatry Residency Training Model Curriculum Award.

Organized by the Program in Global Health & Health Policy

Co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School and its Center for Health & Wellbeing.