Chelsey R. Carter is an Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health with a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Black feminist anthropologist of medicine, public health, and race from St. Louis, Missouri. Her scholarship examines the relationship(s) between social determinants of health (e.g., anti-Black racism, socioeconomic status, gender) and neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and motor neuron diseases (MND). Carter has a background in anthropology and public health, with specific training and expertise in ethnographic research, qualitative methodologies, and applied public health interventions. Her most recent research on race and ALS informs her first book project, tentatively titled, Racialized Local Biologies: Entanglements of Care in the World of ALS. This book centers on the experiences of Black people living with ALS (and their families), scientific knowledge production, and how embodied inequality impacts diagnosis, treatment, and engagement in clinical trials.
Her forthcoming and current research projects investigate medical cannabis and genomic medicine in Black communities (The Black Genome Project). Her scholarship has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, and more. Her public and scholarly work has been published in Anthropology News, Scientific American, Museum Anthropology, Medical Decision Making, British Journal of Health Psychology, American Ethnologist, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
During the 2021-2022 school year, Carter was a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University in the Department of Anthropology. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish, receiving high honors from Emory University. She holds a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology, a master of public health, and a certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.