Collaborators

Sara Ackerman, PhD, MPH
Sara.ackerman@ucsf.edu

Sara Ackerman is a medical anthropologist and Assistant Professional Researcher in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF. Her research interests include the sociocultural and ethical implications of emerging clinical genomics practice guidelines and health IT systems. She also works with multidisciplinary implementation science teams at UCSF and San Francisco General Hospital, using ethnographic methods and science and technology studies theory to study how evidence-based medicine is constructed, mobilized, and taken up in clinical settings. 

Galen Joseph, PhD
Galen.Joseph@ucsf.edu​

Galen Joseph is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco where she is also a member of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research investigates the socio-cultural and institutional dimensions of inequities in cancer care, and social and ethical issues in the translation of genomics to clinical practice.  She is the author of numerous publications and co-edited the recently published a volume of essays “Breast Cancer Gene Research and Medical Practices: Transnational perspectives in the time of BRCA” (Routledge 2014). She enjoys working with Genetic Counseling students and has served as an advisor to several Masters students in the California State University, Stanislaus Genetic Counseling program.  Prior to her work at UCSF, she received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Migration, Globalization and Citizenship at Yale University’s Center for International & Area Studies. 

Thomas May, PhD
Thomas.May@ucsf.edu

Thomas May works at the intersection of moral, social and political philosophy and bioethics.  His current research centers around appropriate uses of genomic technologies, return of secondary findings, and rights to genomic ignorance.  He leads a transdisciplinary, multi-institutional working group on the potential uses of genomics for individuals who were adopted.

Marsha Michie, PhD
Marsha.Michie@ucsf.edu

Marsha Michie is an anthropologist and empirical bioethicist who studies social and ethical issues in genetics, including moral and religious perspectives. Dr. Michie has conducted qualitative research on families of children with genetic disorders, on the understandings and self-perceptions of genetic research participants, and on individual and community religious identities. Her dissertation was a long-term ethnography of an independent Pentecostal church community in North Carolina. Dr. Michie’s current research examines social and ethical issues in the translation of non-invasive prenatal genetic screening from laboratory innovation to a recommended component of prenatal care, through interviews and mixed-method research with patients, obstetricians, and other stakeholders in this technology.