KEITH WAILOO, Ph.D.

Professor Keith Wailoo, Ph.D., is an historian of medicine and the biomedical sciences. In July 2001, he joined the faculty of Rutgers University as Professor of History jointly appointed to the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. Previously, he served nine years on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and one year as visiting professor of the History of Science and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science in 1992 from the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Wailoo’s first book, Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) – exploring the benefits, pitfalls, and complexities associated with technology in 20^th century hematology and medicine – received the 1997 Arthur Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. His most recent book, Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) examines the disease’s early 20^th century invisibility, its gradual rise to clinical, scientific, and political prominence, and the changing socio-political significance into the era of managed care.

Professor Wailoo has taught courses on a wide range of topics, including: Pain, Medicine, and Society in America; Medicine, the Family, and the Politics of Child Health; Disease in Historical Perspective; ‘Racial Health’ and the American South; Genetics, Race, and Medicine; The Politics of Patienthood; and Medicine and Society in America.

In 1999, he received the prestigious James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowship in the History of Science – a $1,000,000 award to examine the history of cancer, immunology, genetics, and pain in the biomedical sciences and in 20^th century society. He has also received awards and grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Human Genome Research (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Program), and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.