Pamela Sankar, Ph.D.
- Associate Professor, Department of Medical Ethics
- Senior Fellow, Center for Bioethics
- Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
Dr. Sankar’s degrees are in history of ideas, anthropology, and communications, and she has completed post-doctoral training in health services research. Dr. Sankar’s research and teaching interests include research ethics, ethical and cultural implications of genetic research, qualitative methods, medical language, genetics and race, and medical confidentiality. She has been the principal investigator of several NIH and foundation-funded grants concerning lay understanding of science, including topics such as genetic technology, medical research, and medical confidentiality. She is currently directing a 4-year, multi-site project funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, entitled “Understanding Difference: Genetics and Social Identity.” This research explores how people interpret differences labeled genetic, and how these interpretations interact with beliefs about racial and ethnic social identities. Presently Dr. Sankar’s work focuses on explaining scientific interest in linking health disparities to genetics. Her recent publications include “Toward a New Vocabulary for Human Genetic Variation” (Science, November 15 2002), “Genetic Privacy” (Annual Review of Medicine, Vol. 54, 2003), and “Medline Definitions of Race and Ethnicity and Their Application Genetic Research” (Nature Genetics, June 2003). Dr. Sankar recently presented the paper “Racial Stereotyping and Health Disparities: Some Unintended Consequences of Genetic Research,” at a University of Michigan conference, Genetics and Health Disparities. She is a member of the Society of Medical Anthropology.