Carolyn Smith-Morris, Ph.D.

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Dr. Smith-Morris is a medical anthropologist with expertise in chronic and complex illness (particularly diabetes), mixed methodologies including community- and home-based participatory research, program evaluation, and health services research among minority and Indigenous communities. Her CBPR research has engaged Amazonian Kichwa in Ecuador, Gila River (Akimel O’odham) Indian Community of Southern Arizona, Australian Peak Hill Wiradjuri, Mexicans and Mexican immigrants to the U.S., and a number of groups in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. She has contributed critical insights to strategies in neighborhood (place) based stigma (NSF funded study of COVID experience in 2 Dallas neighborhoods), values of family- and community-centeredness (NSF funded studies in Ecuador), and health equity (GoogleHealth funded study of diabetes retinopathy screening experience). Dr. Smith-Morris has trained and led collaborative teams in urban, rural, and remote settings and specializes in training and collaboration with community health workers and community research assistants. Dr. Smith-Morris received her B.A. in Anthropology from Emory University, an M.S. in Rehabilitation Services from Florida State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from The University of Arizona. She is a settler, cisgender female professor and researcher with a strong interest in training graduate, mixed-methods researchers. She publishes to a broad, interdisciplinary audience through journals such as: Social Science & Medicine, Nutrients, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, BMC Health Services Research, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and PLOS-One. She has published 4 books including two single-author ethnographies (Indigenous Communalism by Rutgers U. Press and Diabetes Among the Pima by U. Arizona Press), and two edited volumes (Diagnostic Controversy by Routledge Press, and Chronic Conditions, Fluid States with Lenore Manderson, Rutgers U. Press). A 5th is due to be published in 2024, an edited volume with Routledge Press on models of communalism within contemporary capitalist and industrial pressures.

Featured Publications

Moral Distress Under Structural Violence: Clinician Experience in Brazil Caring for Low-Income Families of Children with Severe Disabilities.

Sale ACG, Smith-Morris C, Camb Q Healthc Ethics 2023 Jan 1-13

Professional competition amidst intractable maternal mortality: Midwifery in rural Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Siddiqui S, Smith-Morris C, Soc Sci Med 2022 Nov 313 115426

Decolonizing Care at Diagnosis: Culture, History, and Family at an Urban Inter-tribal Clinic.

Smith-Morris C, Rodriguez S, Soto R, Spencer M, Meneghini L, Med Anthropol Q 2021 Sep 35 3 364-385

Blind spots in telemedicine: a qualitative study of staff workarounds to resolve gaps in diabetes management.

Bouskill K, Smith-Morris C, Bresnick G, Cuadros J, Pedersen ER, BMC Health Serv Res 2018 Aug 18 1 617

Epidemiological placism in public health emergencies: Ebola in two Dallas neighborhoods.

Smith-Morris C, Soc Sci Med 2017 Apr 179 106-114

Indigenous sovereignty, data sourcing, and knowledge sharing for health.

Smith-Morris C, Juaréz-López BM, Tapia A, Shahim B, Glob Public Health 2022 Nov 17 11 2665-2675

Diabetic Retinopathy and the Cascade into Vision Loss.

Smith-Morris C, Bresnick GH, Cuadros J, Bouskill KE, Pedersen ER, Med Anthropol 2020 39 2 109-122

Reconfiguring Metabolism: Critical Ethnographies of Obesity and Diabetes.

Hardon A, Smith-Morris C, Med Anthropol 2019 38 8 777-780

Care as Virtue, Care as Critical Frame: A Discussion of Four Recent Ethnographies.

Smith-Morris C, Med Anthropol 2018 Jul 37 5 426-432

An ethnography on perceptions of pain in Dutch "Natural" childbirth.

Logsdon K, Smith-Morris C, Midwifery 2017 Dec 55 67-74

 Featured Books

Diabetes Among the Pima: Stories of Survival

Carolyn Smith-Morris (2006). Tucson, AZ, The University of Arizona Press

Indigenous Communalism: Belonging, Healthy Communities, and Decolonizing the Collective

Carolyn Smith-Morris (2020). New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press

Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness

Lenore Manderson and Carolyn Smith-Morris (Ed.) (2010). New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press

Diagnostic Controversy: Cultural Perspectives on Competing Knowledge in Healthcare

Carolyn Smith-Morris (Ed.) (2015). New York, NY, Routledge Publishing

• American Anthropological Association (1995)
• Society for Applied Anthropology (2000)
• Society for Medical Anthropology (1995)