Helping prepare bread for a religious ceremony, emaXhoseni, Lady Frere, South Africa 2011
Sarah E. Rubin, MSc, PhD is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Social Medicine at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-HCOM), Cleveland Campus.
She holds a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley, an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, and an MA and PhD in Medical Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University.
Her research asks how women forge meaningful lives under structural constraints. Two long-running projects anchor that work: ethnographic fieldwork with Xhosa mothers in a South African township, and a study of Black mothers' experiences of racism during pregnancy and postpartum in the Midwest. Two newer projects examine how municipal commitments to "racism is a public health crisis" become actual programming for infant mortality reduction, and how advances in genomics shape public health responses to SIDS.
At OU-HCOM, her teaching brings social-science and clinical disciplines into conversation, using methods like flipped classroom and team-based learning. She co-founded the Racism in Medicine Seminar Series, a seven-week extracurricular program for OU-HCOM students, and serves as Preclinical Curriculum Director for the Pathways to Health and Wellness Curriculum.
Mentoring medical-student research is central to her work; a 2023 interview in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry discusses her approach. Recent student projects she has supervised include racial disparities in breastfeeding, Black birthing with doulas, harm reduction and infant safe sleep, prenatal care adherence and social determinants of health, Black OBGYNs and obstetric racism, cervical cancer screening in Nepal, cultural competency in medical education, and mental health and substance use in Botswana.
She is also co-director of the South Africa Medicine summer study abroad program, a facilitator for the Transformative Care Continuum, and advisor in Ohio University's Master of Global Health program.
Racial disparities in Infant Mortality Research Team 2016
Recent Publications
Akhter, A., Rubin, S., Takyi-Micah, N., & Zabala, A. (2025). Rethinking Maternal Mental Health Solutions: Addressing Racial Disparities in Ohio and Beyond. Ohio Journal of Public Health, 7(2), 1–6. https://ojph.org/article/id/6413/ Argues for race-conscious policy approaches to Ohio's maternal mental health crisis.
Casapulla, S., Rubin, S., Nigeda, B., Pichardo, G., & Patton, K. (2025). "Because Doulas Save Black Women's Lives": Black Women's Strategic Use of Doulas in Anticipation and Experiences of Obstetric Racism. Women's Reproductive Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/23293691.2025.2486384 How Black women turn to doulas as a strategic response to racism they anticipate and experience in perinatal care.
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, 47, 495–518. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-022-09780-7 Ethnographic study of 17 pregnant and postpartum Black women in Cleveland on what they call "betterment," a way of parenting against the conditions of structural racism. Co-authored with then-medical-student Joselyn Hines.
Smith-Oka, V., Rubin, S. E., & Dixon, L. Z. (2022). Obstetric Violence in Their Own Words: How Women in Mexico and South Africa Expect, Experience, and Respond to Violence. Violence Against Women, 28(11), 2700–2721. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778012211037375 Cross-site ethnographic comparison of obstetric violence in Mexico and South Africa, with a temporal model for women's encounters with violence in childbirth (before, during, after).
Rubin, S. E. (2018). "The Inimba It Cuts": A Reconsideration of Mother Love in the Context of Poverty. Ethos, 46(3), 330–350. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12210 Solo ethnographic article on Xhosa mothers in a Cape Town township and the moral stakes of sending children to be raised by other mother-figures under conditions of extreme poverty.
Zraly, M., Rubin, S. E., & Mukamana, D. (2013). Motherhood and Resilience Among Rwandan Genocide-Rape Survivors. Ethos, 41(4), 411–439. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12031 Mothering and resilience among women survivors of genocidal rape in Rwanda.