Ryan Whitacre

Medical Anthropology, PhD

Welcome

ABOUT

I am a Research Scientist at the Public Health Institute and a Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

I work to advance health equity and improve health systems. My current projects aim to diagnose commercial determinants of health that reinforce disparities (in cancer, infectious disease, substance use), mitigate financial toxicity for patients in need for life-saving therapies, and improve rights, protections and services for queer refugees.

I earned a PhD in the UCSF-UC Berkeley joint program in medical anthropology (2018), and completed postdoctoral training in global health at The Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland (2018-22).

Publications

My research has been published in leading academic journals, including: AIDS and Behavior (2020); Global Public Health (2019, 2021); HIV Medicine (2023); Journal of the International AIDS Society (2020); the Journal of Refugee Studies (2024) Medicine, Anthropology, Theory (2021); and Social Science and Medicine (2024).

I authored the first dissertation in medical anthropology exploring how the development and implementation of novel biomedical methods to prevent HIV impacted the intimate lives of marginalized populations in the United States: “Intimate Innovation: A Novel Method to Prevent HIV” (University of California, 2018).

I have also contributed to two edited books exploring the social aspects of sexual and reproductive health technologies, Remaking HIV Prevention in the 21st Century (Bernays et al., 2021); and Technologies of Reproduction Across the Lifecourse (Boydell & Dow, 2022).

You can review some of my recent social science publications linked below:

  • Financial Fallout in the US Biopharmaceutical Industry

    Highlights Abstract Patients are suffering the consequences of financialization – as shareholders demand high returns from pharmaceutical companies, pharmaceuticals squeeze profits out of top-selling products, and insurers charge higher premiums for limited coverage, the impact of financialization cascades across the value chain to compound the burden of cost for patients. This article offers a novel…

  • Liminality and transactional sex among queer refugees: Insights from Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, and Switzerland

    Credit: Andrew Chan, the Cat who Knits, and Ryan Whitacre, “Caught Between States,” Created for the inaugural HIV Science as Art Exhibit at the International AIDS Society meeting, Brisbane, AUS, July 2023. Abstract: People of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions who have been forcibly displaced (hereafter referred to as ‘queer refugees’) encounter liminal…

  • How the politics of intimate relationships structure innovation

    In this chapter, I argue the politics of intimate relationships structure innovation for sexual and reproductive health technologies. I present three case studies that explore how national political concerns surrounding maternal intentions and the race of sexual women shape the production of sexual and reproductive health technologies. The products I examine are: GONAL-F, a subcutaneous…

  • COVID-19 and the political geography of racialisation

    The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed health systems around the globe, and intensified the lethality of social and political inequality. In the United States, where public health departments have been severely defunded, Black, Native, Latinx communities and those experiencing poverty in the country’s largest cities are disproportionately infected and disproportionately dying. Based on our collective ethnographic…

  • Revealing truth through diagnostics

    This article examines the changing role of ‘confessional technologies’ (Foucault 1990) over the history of the HIV pandemic, beginning when US public health departments first rolled out testing campaigns and continuing in the present day through the expansion of diagnostic practices to support the development and implementation of pharmaceutical technologies for HIV prevention. Across this…

I’ve also worked with leading research teams working to improve novel methods for HIV prevention and reduce the negative impacts of financialization on global public health. See those on my Google Scholar page.

Ryan Whitacre

Medical Anthropology, PhD