Lab

Siamit Lab tells stories about caregiving, public health, and the future of country medicine.

Climate and health at the World Economic Forum

Climate change is felt deeply in the Alaskan arctic, with impacts blurring the lines between cultural, economic, environmental, and physical health. Research fellow Cassidy Kramer addresses the intersection of climate change, subsistence practice, and one health at the World Economic Forum.

Siamit in Academic Medicine

American Indians and Alaska Natives have long held state-conferred health rights, but health care disparities persist. An innovation report in Academic Medicine shares the partnership model developed by teams at Harvard, Mass General Brigham, and Maniilaq Social Medicine to advance a health equity agenda in Northwest Alaska.

Covid-19 requires a social medicine response

Covid-19 is a social disease, with exposure, illness, care, and outcomes stratified along familiar social, economic, and racial lines. These disparities charge policy leaders to shape a response grounded in social medicine. Siamit faculty Lucas Trout and Arthur Kleinman write in Frontiers in Sociology.

Realizing Indigenous health rights

New approaches to primary care are on the rise. One tribal health system is working toward health equity by addressing the social determinants of health in primary care settings. Siamit faculty Lucas Trout and Corina Kramer write in Health and Human Rights.

Coloniality and Indigenous resurgence

In a keynote at the Hotıì ts'eeda Ełèts’ehdèe Gathering, Siamit faculty Donna May Kimmaliardjuk speaks to the state and future of Inuit health. Watch from Hotıì ts'eeda, or read a published version in Northern Public Affairs.

Lessons from TB in battling Covid-19

There’s a lot we can learn from one of the last great pandemics: tuberculosis. The strategies used by wealthy countries to wipe it out within their borders in the 1950s hold lessons for the world. Siamit faculty Salmaan Keshavjee writes for NPR.

Health technologies in the North

Health communications technologies have played a big role in changing arctic lives, lands, and cultures. A Northern Public Affairs story from Siamit faculty Lucas Trout, Arthur Kleinman, Tanya Kirk, and Mark Erickson about just how much the the internet matters.

Siamit responds to COVID-19

Siamit faculty Ashley Weisman and Lucas Trout describe the role of academic-tribal health partnerships in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in rural Alaska. Read on in the Harvard Gazette.

The complexities of Covid-19 testing

We want coronavirus tests to give us the all-clear. But, in medicine, test results are clues, not answers—and no test is perfect. Siamit fellow Clayton Dalton writes in The New Yorker.

Suicide, social medicine, and the purview of care

Rural Alaska health health workers seek footing to redress a suicide crisis that many ascribe to colonialism itself. In the end, a single question: What is care, anyways? An ethnography in Health and Human Rights.

 

Teaching social medicine

Siamit is working to move social medicine education beyond the preclinical curriculum and into rural hospitals and clinics across the country. A paper from Siamit faculty and fellows in Social Medicine shares the education model used by partners at Siamit, Maniilaq, Harvard, and MGH

From rural Alaska to global primary health care

Siamit faculty Lucas Trout describes three care innovations in the Alaska Tribal Health System with broad implications for global primary care. Read more in the World Health Organization’s Young Leaders Blog.

The risks of normalizing the coronavirus

What do we lose when we become numb to mass death? Siamit fellow Clayton Dalton writes about his experiences treating Covid-19 patients in The New Yorker.

Decoloniality as an ethics of care

What happens when community members, health workers, and researchers partner to develop suicide prevention tools grounded in an ethics of decoloniality. Wexler, Barnett, Trout, and Moto write in Northern Public Affairs.

Climate, subsistence, and Indigenous futures

Siamit research fellow Cassidy Kramer joined Arctic Basecamp — and Dwight Schrute! — to speak to the impact of climate change on her home—and the need to take decisive action now.

A social medicine response to Covid-19

Social medicine brings with it a set of tools for responding to the waves of human suffering that have already arrived—as well as others still to come. Siamit faculty Lucas Trout shares Alaska’s social medicine response in a broadcast from the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care.