News Article
Becker promoted to professor
28 Sep 2010
The Department is delighted to announce that Anne Becker, MD, PhD, ScM, has been promoted to Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, effective September 1. This promotion recognizes Dr. Becker's many valuable contributions to the fields of medical anthropology, social medicine, and psychiatry, her commitment to the global health mission of our department, and, significantly, her commitment to mentorship of young clinicians and scholars seeking career pathways in this work.
Dr. Becker’s roots in the Department extend, with Paul Farmer’s, to the beginning of their student days in the MD-PhD program here. Both shared the extraordinary mentorship and support of Arthur Kleinman and Leon Eisenberg, who started the program, and all of the faculty who built it. Indeed, Anne's career is built on the Department's legacy of intellectual rigor, commitment to addressing the social roots of disease, and an expansive vision of the potential role of medicine in a world riven by inequality.
Like many in the Department, Dr. Becker works across numerous programs and institutions, leading diverse but complementary efforts and forging new connections among them. In addition to her work here, she is an associate professor of psychiatry at HMS, director of the HMS Social Sciences MD-PhD Program, and director of the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Among her other current activities, Anne is working on a book about the effects of rapid social change on suicide, disordered eating, and other health-risk behaviors registered among Fijian adolescent girls.