Emily Mendenhall, PhD, MPH is a medical anthropologist, expert in global health, public health and mental health, and Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she leads the global health concentration in the Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) Program.
Emily Mendenhall’s research explores the power of stories, what people say and how they choose to talk about suffering; as well as the interactions between health and other dimensions of people’s lives, that require just as much, if not more, attention than the physical for people to heal.
Mendenhall also put stories at the center of her most recent book on COVID-19 in her hometown in northwest Iowa. This was published as a book, Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji, as well as a series of comics in the magazine, Sapiens.
Her research has been published in various prestigious journals, such as Social Science & Medicine, Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health, Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and Global Public Health, as well as in numerous public-facing outlets, ranging from Vox and The Atlantic to Scientific American and Sapiens. Her most recent updates can be found on her personal website.
Work and Life in Crisis: The Medical Humanities Responds to COVID-19
March 14th, 2024
Hosted by Medical Humanities Visiting Scholar Cora Salkovskis, this medical humanities colloquium featured scholarship and discussions from Johns Hopkins University historian of medicine Graham…
Conversation in Medical Humanities with Professor Langley and Professor Mendenhall
November 28th, 2023
On November 28th, the first in a series of Conversations in Medical Humanities events was held. The Conversations in Medical Humanities series will be a sequence of events where faculty will share…
“Core Faculty Member, Dr. Emily Mendenhall, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship”
April 13th, 2023
Our very own Dr. Emily Mendenhall has been selected as a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient for her work in medical anthropology and public health.…
“Syndemics and Clinical Science”
July 21st, 2022
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors discuss the emergence of syndemics, how epidemics interact, and what scientists, clinicians and policymakers can do with this information.…
Emily Mendenhall Presents Her Book Unmasked in the New Books in Science, Technology, and Society podcast
May 23rd, 2022
Emily Mendenhall tells host Austin Clyde the story of her most recent book, Unmasked: COVID, Community and the Case of Okoboji from the New Books in Science, Technology, and Society podcast.…
Aaron Gronstal Creates Comic Illustrations to Translate Emily Mendenhall’s Unmasked into Visual Form
May 3rd, 2022
Aaron Gronstal, an astrobiologist and visual artist from Okoboji, uses comic illustrations to translate Emily Mendenhall’s Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji into visual form.…
Emily Mendenhall Presented Her Latest Book at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
April 19th, 2022
Emily Mendenhall spoke about newest book, Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.…
Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health Video Podcast: Emily Mendenhall on Flourishing and Health in Critical Perspective
April 13th, 2022
Emily Mendenhall and Sarah S. Willen talk about “Flourishing and Health in Critical Perspective: An Invitation to Interdisciplinary Dialogue,” the first series of the Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health journal. The conversation centers around how interdisciplinary dialogue can improve the way we study flourishing and health – and the clinical and policy interventions we propose.…
Iowa Public Radio – Talk of Iowa: Emily Mendenhall on When Okoboji Became a COVID-19 Hotspot
April 8th, 2022
Emily Mendenhall joins host Charity Nebbe to share what she learned when she studied the pandemic in her hometown — Okoboji —, for her book Unmasked: COVID, Community and the Case of Okoboji.…
The Annual Maloy Distinguished Lecture on Global Health | Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji by Emily Mendenhall
April 4th, 2022
On April 4 , 2022, the Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) Program, in partnership with the Global Health Initiative and the Mortara Center for International Studies, will host The Annual Maloy Distinguished Lecture on Global Health. Join the panel discussion of Emily Mendenhall’s newest book, Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji.…
COVID, Quickly, Episode 27: “Second Boosters, Masks in the Next Wave and Smart Risk Decisions”, Scientific American Looks at Emily Mendenhall’s Research About Attitudes Toward Masks
April 1st, 2022
In this episode of the “COVID, Quickly”, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman look at Emily Mendenhall’s research on people’s attitudes towards masks, to understand how the decision to wear a mask reflects people’s perceptions of risk and views about government.…
Launch of Emily Mendenhall’s New Book Unmasked
March 19th, 2022
On March 19, 2022, Emily Mendenhall and Rebecca Katz met at the Politics and Prose independent bookstore to discuss her recently launched book, Unmasked.…
Unmasked
March 16th, 2022
In this book, Emily Mendenhall writes about what happened in her hometown, Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the coronavirus to the economy occurred in the COVID summer of 2020. State political failures, local negotiations among political and public health leaders, and community (dis)belief about the virus resulted in Okoboji being declared a hotspot just before the Independence Day weekend, when an influx of half a million people visit the town.…
“What Will We Tell Our Grandkids About The Last Two Years?”, Emily Mendenhall’s Reflections on Scary Mommy
March 8th, 2022
“What stories will we tell our grandchildren? How will the pandemic look to us in 10, 20, 30 years, or more? How will the pandemic period affect how we relate to each other in the future?”. These are some of the questions that Emily Mendenhall explores in her article “What Will We Tell Our Grandkids About The Last Two Years?”, published on Scary Mommy.…
NutrireCoLab Episode 6: Emily Mendenhall Interviews Lauren Carruth about her New Book Love and Liberation
March 2nd, 2022
Emily Mendenhall interviews medical anthropologist Lauren Carruth about her decades of work in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Carruth describes how she traveled around the country working on medical and humanitarian aid. She delves into the complexities through which love and liberation get revealed in the everyday work of local humanitarian laborers.…
NutrireCoLab Episode 7: Interview with Professor Emily Mendenhall about her New Book Unmasked
March 1st, 2022
Lauren Carruth interviews Emily Mendenhall about how people in her hometown in northwest Iowa responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. She describes why people unmasked and how social relations within the community played out over the course of the pandemic. Many people were very cautious, while some people ignored public health recommendations for personal gain.…
“Words about Mental Health Need to Align with People’s Understanding of Well Being”, Piece Co-Authored by Emily Mendenhall in The Conversation
February 21st, 2022
The authors explain how patient perceptions of health may not always align with medical terms.…
Emily Mendenhall Talked at the Public Health Conversation on Mental Health and Trauma: Context and Consequences, at the Boston University School of Public Health
February 14th, 2022
Emily Mendenhall was a speaker at the Boston University School of Public Health’s public health conversation on “Mental Health and Trauma: Context and Consequences”, presenting her work on the session centered on “Placing trauma in a social determinants of health framework”.…
NutrireCoLab Episode 5: Edna Bosire in Conversation with Emily Mendenhall on her Work at the Intersection of Health, Nutrition, Anthropology, and Health Systems
February 14th, 2022
Emily Mendenhall interviews her longtime colleague Edna Bosire about her personal journey in the field of anthropology, and her work at the intersection of health, nutrition, anthropology, and health systems. Bosire also provides insights into her work as an ethnographer of health policy and systems in Malawi and in her work with Health Systems Global.…
Women in Research: Christopher Tancock Interviews Emily Mendenhall
February 14th, 2022
Emily Mendenhall talks with Christopher Tancock about her work as co-Editor-in-Chief of the Social Science and Medicine-Mental Health journal, and the biggest challenges and obstacles women face in the editorial world.…
“Syndemic Theory, Methods, and Data”
December 14th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall, Timothy Newfield and Alexander Tsai introduce an Special Issue of Social Science & Medicine, focused on Rethinking Syndemics through time, space, and method.…
“Emily Mendenhall Unmasks COVID-19 Denialism in her Hometown”, the Walsh School of Foreign Service Presents Mendenhall’s New Book
December 8th, 2021
The Walsh School of Foreign Service presents Emily Mendenhall’s upcoming book, “Unmasked: COVID, Community and the Case of Okoboji”. “Unmasked” unpacks the “everyday disagreements” about COVID-19 Mendenhall observed firsthand in her hometown during that first pandemic summer. The book is also an examination of the performance of politics as social and cultural practice.…
“We Need School-Age Vaccine Mandates to End the COVID Pandemic”, Emily Mendenhall’s Opinion in Scientific American
November 24th, 2021
Although vaccination has been proven crucial for protecting children and families, many parents are choosing not to vaccinate school-aged children. Emily Mendenhall argues that, to protect the most vulnerable, and to end this pandemic before a new coronavirus mutation takes over, we need to have a federal vaccine mandate for children in public schools.…
“Ukuphumelela: Flourishing and the Pursuit of a Good Life, and Good Health, in Soweto, South Africa”
September 24th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and her research team investigate how people residing in Soweto, located in South Africa’s Gauteng province, define, experience, and express what it means to live a flourishing life, both on its own and in relation to health.…
Infectious Historians Podcast, Episode #78: Covid in Iowa with Emily Mendenhall
September 17th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall joins Merle Eisenberg and Lee Mordechai to discuss Covid in her hometown in northwest Iowa.…
COVID, Quickly, Episode 14: “Best Masks, Explaining Mask Anger, Biden’s New Plan”, Scientific American Tackled Emily Mendenhall’s Research
September 10th, 2021
In this episode of Scientific American’s podcast series “COVID, Quickly”, senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman explore Emily Mendenhall’s research on mask rejection in Okoboji, Iowa.…
“How COVID, Inequality and Politics Make a Vicious Syndemic”, Emily Mendenhall and Clarence C. Gravlee in Scientific American
August 26th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and Clarence C. Gravlee analyze the conditions that made COVID a syndemic in the US.…
“The Anthropology of Health Systems: A History and Review”
August 13th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors conceptualize the anthropology of health systems as a field; review the history of this body of knowledge; and outline emergent literatures on policymaking, HIV, hospitals, Community Health Workers, health markets, pharmaceuticals, and metrics. They describe high-quality ethnographic work as an excellent way to understand the complex systems that shape health outcomes, which provides a critical vantage point for thinking about global health policy and systems.…
“Flourishing: Migration and Health in Social Context”
April 7th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and other researchers draw on case studies from three world regions, to propose concrete steps clinicians and health institutions can take in order to better serve migrant patients.…
“Introduction: Migration and Health in Social Context”
April 7th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and Seth M. Holmes introduce the BMJ Global Health journal’s issue on “Migration and Health in Social Context”, focused on the social, political and economic structural factors that impede or facilitate health among the most vulnerable migrants seeking care from clinical settings globally.…
“On Symbols and Scripts: The Politics of the American COVID-19 Response”
March 19th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors argue that, to unravel the American COVID-19 crisis —and to craft effective responses—, a more sophisticated understanding of the political culture of public health crises is needed. According to the researchers, the social processes of meaning-making help explain the evolution of increasingly partisan public health discourse regarding topics like masking and institutional trust. They consider how and why certain issues gain political valence, and what opportunities certain acts of politicization provide in shifting public discourse.…
Georgetown Now: A Conversation with Georgetown President John J. DeGioia featuring Emily Mendenhall
February 24th, 2021
Conversation between Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Emily Mendenhall.…
“A Spectrum of (Dis)Belief: Coronavirus Frames in a Rural Midwestern Town in the United States”
February 9th, 2021
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors investigate how society in rural America reacted to the coronavirus outbreaks of 2020. Without government COVID-19 mandates, conflicting moral beliefs divided American communities. Social fragmentation, based on conflicting values, led to an incomplete pandemic response in the absence of government mandates, opening the floodgates to coronavirus.…
“’Thinking Too Much’: A Systematic Review of the Idiom of Distress in Sub-Saharan Africa”
January 2nd, 2021
In this systematic review, Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors take a look at the idiom “thinking too much”. This idiom is employed in cultural settings worldwide to express feelings of emotional and cognitive disquiet with psychological, physical, and social consequences on people’s well-being and daily functioning. The researchers analyze how, where, and among whom this idiom is used within varied Sub-Saharan African contexts.…
Everybody Hates Me: Let’s Talk About Stigma Podcast: Dr. Emily Mendenhall, Stigma, Syndemics and Diabetes
December 23rd, 2020
Emily Mendenhall discusses with host Dr. Carmen Logie the concept of syndemic, based on her global research on diabetes, HIV, violence, depression and trauma.…
“The COVID-19 Syndemic Is Not Global: Context Matters”
October 22nd, 2020
In this publication, Emily Mendenhall argues that, before defining a disease like COVID-19 as a syndemic, we need to look at the context first.…
“Evaluating the Mental Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perceived Risk of COVID-19 Infection and Childhood Trauma Predict Adult Depressive Symptoms in Urban South Africa”
September 8th, 2020
Emily Mendenhall, Andrew Wooyoung Kim and Tawanda Nyengerai evaluate the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Soweto, a major township in South Africa, a society where one in three individuals develops a psychiatric disorder during their life.…
“Metabolic Reflections: Blurring the Line between Trauma and Diabetes”
August 24th, 2020
Emily Mendenhall argues for clinical studies of diabetes to recognize the impacts of chronic stress and trauma on metabolism. In her anthropological research, she has identified how lines between trauma and diabetes are blurred and violence and subjugation may irreversibly impact metabolism, even across generations. Thus, changes to diet and exercise alone will not solve the global and local undercurrents of the diabetes epidemic.…
“How an Iowa Summer Resort Region Became a COVID-19 Hot Spot”, Emily Mendenhall Writes about her Research in Vox
August 8th, 2020
Drawing on her research about the COVID-19 response in the Iowa Great Lakes region, Emily Mendenhall writes about the high number of cases and people’s reluctance to wear masks, showing how the deep conflicts around the coronavirus in the region reflect broader friction across the country.…
“America Should Prepare for a Double Pandemic”, The Atlantic Explores Emily Mendenhall’s Research
July 15th, 2020
On its coverage of America’s need to prepare for new disease outbreaks, The Atlantic highlights Emily Mendenhall’s research about syndemics and the influence that every aspect of society has on public health.…
The Health Disparities Podcast: Both Pandemic and Syndemic – How Clusters of Preexisting Comorbid Conditions Have Driven Up Fatalities, featuring Emily Mendenhall and Robert Like
May 22nd, 2020
Emily Mendenhall and Robert Like discuss the syndemic concept with host Mary O’Connor, to explain why certain populations are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, and offer insights into potential solutions.…
“Deconstructing PTSD: Trauma and Emotion among Mexican Immigrant Women”
February 11th, 2020
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors investigate traumatic experience in life history narratives of low-income Mexican immigrant women in Chicago.…
“Preparing for Emerging Infections Means Expecting New Syndemics”
July 27th, 2019
Emily Mendenhall and Colin J. Carlson explain the importance of syndemic thinking in complicating our understanding of epidemics like the Zika virus outbreak in Latin America and the Caribbean.…
Emily Mendenhall on Why We Need to Rethink Diabetes
July 18th, 2019
Emily Mendenhall challenges the idea that diabetes is a “lifestyle disease”, which views individuals as solely responsible for diabetes. Mendenhall argues that diabetes is a product of society, of both global and local factors.…
Rethinking Diabetes
July 15th, 2019
In Rethinking Diabetes, Emily Mendenhall investigates how global and local factors transform how diabetes is perceived, experienced, and embodied from place to place.…
“Rapid Range Shifts in African Anopheles Mosquitoes Over the Last Century”
June 19th, 2019
The team of researchers that includes Emily Mendenhall and Timothy Newfield uses historical data to trace range shifts in Anopheles mosquitoes, which are the vector of malaria and several neglected tropical diseases.…
“‘Wasting Away’: Diabetes, Food Insecurity, and Medical Insecurity in the Somali Region of Ethiopia”
March 20th, 2019
Emily Mendenhall and Lauren Carruth investigate rising concerns about diabetes among Somalis in eastern Ethiopia. They focus on communities where obesity is rare and people face chronic food insecurity, forced displacement, recurrent humanitarian crises, and lack of access to medical care.…
“The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change”
February 23rd, 2019
Emily Mendenhall and Merrill Singer respond to the work the The Lancet Commission on the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change.…
“An Ethnopsychology of Idioms of Distress in Urban Kenya”
January 23rd, 2019
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors propose a preliminary model of ethnopsychology which incorporates local and global idioms of distress used by urban Kenyans to express suffering, pain, or illness.…
