Education

PhD, Ethnology and Social Anthropology, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1996

PhD, Social Sciences and Health, School of Economics, University of Barcelona, 1997

MPH, International Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 1998

MA, History and Social Anthropology, University of Barcelona, 1988

RD, Nutrition, Polytechnic Institute of Barcelona, 1988

Biography

Arachu Castro, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Samuel Z. Stone Chair of Public Health in Latin America and Director of the Collaborative Group for Health Equity in Latin America at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Her major interests are how social inequalities are embodied as differential risk for pathologies common among the poor and how health policies may alter the course of epidemic disease and other pathologies afflicting populations living in poverty. Dr. Castro works at the intersection of medical anthropology and epidemiology and has a focus on reproductive health, maternal and child health, and infectious disease from a health equity perspective. She is the lead author of the UNICEF-Tulane publication Health Equity Report 2016: Analysis of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health Inequities in Latin America and the Caribbean to Inform Policy Making. Dr. Castro has worked in Mexico, Argentina, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Bolivia. Prior to joining Tulane in 2013, she was Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Among other awards, Dr. Castro is the recipient of the 2005 Rudolf Virchow Award and the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2012 she was named Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology and in 2017 she became President of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. She has worked as consultant for PAHO, WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, UNDP, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and is in the Board of Directors of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC). Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, the Maternal Health Task Force, UNICEF, the Pan American Health Organization, UNAIDS, Tulane University, and Harvard University, among others. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology and ethnology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1996), a Ph.D. in social sciences and health from the University of Barcelona (1997), and a MPH from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston (1998).

Publications

Please view Dr. Castro's publications at NCBI Profile page and Google Scholar.

Publications on mistreatment of women during childbirth:

Witnessing obstetric violence during fieldwork: Notes from Latin America. Castro A. Health and Human Rights. 2019; 21(1):103-113.

Obstetric Violence as Reproductive Governance in the Dominican Republic. Castro A, Savage V. Medical anthropology. 2019; 38(2):123-136. PMID: 30433822.

Measuring mistreatment of women during childbirth: a review of terminology and methodological approaches. Savage V, Castro A. Reproductive health. 2017; 14(1):138. PMID: 29073914. PMCID: PMC5658997.

Assessing equitable care for Indigenous and Afrodescendant women in Latin America. Castro A, Savage V, Kaufman H. Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública = Pan American Journal of Public Health. 2015; 38(2):96-109. PMID: 26581050.

Preprint from the 1000 Days in the Dominican Republic (1000 DRD) Project:

Validation of the Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool for Children in the Dominican Republic. Sanchez-Vincitore LV, Schaettle P, Castro A. bioRxiv 497347; 2018; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/497347. 

Publications on health equity:

Childhood asthma from a health equity perspective: The case of Latin America and the Caribbean. Castro A. Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology 2019 Mar 6. pii: S1081-1206(19)30145-0. doi: 10.1016/j.anai.2019.02.029. PMID: 30851459

The Transformative Potential of Strategic Partnerships to Form a Health Equity Network of the Americas. Rodríguez MR, Marmot MG, Salgado de Snyder VN, Galvão LAC, Avellaneda X, Sáenz MR, Dubois AM, Tarzibachi E, Ritterbusch AE, Castro A, Plough A, Heymann J. Ethn Dis. 2019;29(Suppl 1):153-158; doi:10.18865/ed.29.S1.153.

Health and Inequality. Castro A. in The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Callan H, editor. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell; 2018. 1-3p.

Health Equity Report 2016: Analysis of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health Inequities in Latin America and the Caribbean to Inform Policy Making. UNICEF - Tulane University. UNICEF: Panama City, 2016, 145 pp.

Informe sobre Equidad en Salud 2016: Un análisis de las inequidades en salud reproductiva, materna, neonatal, de la niñez y de la adolescencia en América Latina y el Caribe para guiar la formulación de políticas. UNICEF - Universidad de Tulane. Panama City: UNICEF, 2016, 146 pp.

#MeToo in Global Health:

#MeToo Meets Global Health: A call to action. A statement by participants of the Global Health Fieldwork Ethics Workshop, April 2018. Health and Human Rights. 2019; 21(1):133-139.