MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST. Researcher. Teacher.

SARAH E
RUBIN

Sarah E Rubin, MSc, PhD is a Medical Anthropologist and an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Social Medicine at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-HCOM), Cleveland Campus.

Dr. Rubin holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from University of California at Berkeley, a Master of Research in Coursework in African Studies from University of Oxford, a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in Medical Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Rubin’s research contributes to our understanding of how how humans cope with oppression and forge meaningful lives under these constraints. Driven by a commitment to unraveling racial and gender disparities in health, her ethnographic and phenomenological projects elucidate associations between daily experiences and overarching structural constraints. Contributing a robust understanding of how mothers cope with oppression, her research includes a critical analysis of global racial disparities in South Africa among Xhosa women, and an exploration of Black mothers’ experiences of racism during pregnancy and postpartum in the Midwest. Current projects include exploring how municipal commitments to “racism is a public health crisis” translate into public health health equity programming for infant mortality reduction; in addition, investigating how genomics advancements and technologies impact public health processes using SIDS reduction work as a case study.

As medical school faculty at OU-HCOM, Dr. Rubin’s pedagogy focuses on integrating disparate ways of knowing across social science and clinical disciplines through strategies such as flipped classroom, team-based learning, and experiential approaches. Dr. Rubin is a leader and collaborator in building anti-racism and health disparities knowledge into the medical school curriculum. She is a co-founder and co-instructor for the Racism in Medicine Seminar series, an extracurricular 7-week program for OU-HCOM students to build advanced cultural competency in medicine.

Dr. Rubin also champions and mentors medical students in research. She is currently mentoring students in projects that explore racial disparities in breastfeeding, Black birthing with doulas, cultural competency in medical education, GME readiness in pediatric dermatology residency, mental health among vulnerable pregnant women, HPV vaccination in Nepal, and more.

 Recent Publications

Rubin, S. E., & Hines, J. (2022). “As Long as I Got a Breath in My Body”: Risk and Resistance in Black Maternal Embodiment. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 1-24.

Sara, B. A., Rubin, S. E., Haile, Z. T., Alemu, D. G., & Chertok, I. R. A. (2022). Factors Associated with Men’s Opinion about Female Genital Mutilation in Ethiopia. Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, 100721.

Smith-Oka, V., Rubin, S. E., & Dixon, L. Z. (2021). Obstetric violence in their own words: how women in Mexico and South Africa expect, experience, and respond to violence. Violence against women, 10778012211037375.

Rubin, S. E. (2018). “The inimba it cuts”: a reconsideration of mother love in the context of poverty. Ethos, 46(3), 330-350.