Alyssa Botelho
Research Interests: History of medicine, public health, and global health; history of biology; health policy; medical humanities
Alyssa completed her MD at Harvard Medical School and PhD in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University in May 2023. She is currently doing a residency in Washington State.
Her work focuses on questions of equity in health and medicine. Her dissertation examines the history of health disparities in the rural United States, with a focus on how efforts to build and sustain rural hospitals over the twentieth century figured into movements for racial equality, economic justice, and Indigenous sovereignty in rural communities. Her previous research was on the history of the radical science movement Science for the People, and their activist and intellectual interventions on issues in biology and medicine.
Articles and Chapters:
Holmgren, A. Jay, Alyssa Botelho, and Allan M. Brandt. “A History of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs in the United States: Political Appeal and Public Health Efficacy.” American Journal of Public Health 110, no. 8 (June 2020): e1-e7. DOI:10.2105/AJPH.2020.305696
Brandt, Allan M. and Alyssa Botelho. “Not a Perfect Storm — Covid-19 and the Importance of Language.” The New England Journal of Medicine 382, no. 16 (April 2020): 1493-1495. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2005032
Botelho, Alyssa. “The Insights of Radical Science in the CRISPR Gene-Editing Era: A History of Science for the People and the Cambridge Recombinant DNA Controversy.” Science as Culture (June 7, 2019): 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2019.1623190.
Schmalzer, Sigrid, Daniel S. Chard, and Alyssa Botelho, eds. Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists, 1969-1989. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
Botelho, Alyssa. “Biology and Medicine.” In Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists, 1969-1989, edited by Sigrid Schmalzer, Daniel S. Chard, and Alyssa Botelho. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
Botelho, Alyssa. “Race and Gender.” In Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists, 1969-1989, edited by Sigrid Schmalzer, Daniel S. Chard, and Alyssa Botelho. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
Botelho, Alyssa. “A Moral Economy of Genes.” Review of Doogab Yi’s The Recombinant University: Genetic Engineering and the Emergence of Stanford Biotechnology. Endeavour 39, no. 3-4 (Sep-Dec 2015): 128.
Presentations:
“Ghost Hospitals: A History of Rural Hospitals, and Efforts to Keep Them Alive, in the 20th Century United States.” The National Conference for Physician-Scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities (Ann Arbor, MI, April 6, 2019).
“The Lessons of Science for the People for Today’s Physicians-and Scientists-in-Training.” American Historical Association (Washington, D.C., Jan 7, 2018).
“Caring for the Indian Heart: The Role of Race at the Stanford South Asian Translational Heart Initiative.” Society for Social Studies of Science (Boston, MA, Sep 1, 2017).
Previous Degrees:
AB., History of Science, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University