Stress and mental health in humanitarian crises: A biosocial approach to program evaluation with Syrian refugees

Dr. Catherine Panter-Brick, Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs; Public Health, Yale University

Catherine Panter-Brick is Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs at Yale University, and the Medical Anthropology Senior Editor for Social Science & Medicine. Her research addresses issues of risk and resilience in contexts of war, displacement, famine, and poverty. She has directed more than forty interdisciplinary research projects in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Jordan, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. She works to develop effective partnerships between academic scholars, health policy-makers, and humanitarian practitioners. For her work in humanitarian areas, she received the Lucy Mair Medal, awarded by the Royal Anthropology Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to honor excellence in the application of anthropology to the relief of poverty and distress and to the active recognition of human dignity.

Professor Panter-Brick has authored over 140 scientific publications in the biomedical, health, and social sciences and coedited seven books, most recently Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice (Pennsylvania Press 2015) and Pathways to Peace (MIT Press, 2014). Initially schooled in French, she received her MA degree in Human Sciences and her PhD in Biological Anthropology from Oxford University. She has worked with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was based at Durham University for twenty years, before moving to Yale University where she directs the Program on Conflict, Resilience, and Health and the Program on Stress and Family Resilience.