Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD, SM

Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine

Educational history

  • 2005 Sc.M. Harvard School of Public Health
  • 1990 M.D. Harvard Medical School
  • 1990 Ph.D. Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (Anthropology)
  • 1983 A.B. Harvard College

Professional Training

  • 1990-91 Internship in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 1991-94 Residency in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 1994-95 Research and clinical fellowship, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital

Anne E. Becker is Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is also Vice Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine as well as Director of the HMS Social Sciences M.D.-Ph.D. Program at Harvard Medical School. In addition, Dr. Becker serves as editor of the cultural psychiatry column for the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, is on the editorial board of Anthropology & Medicine, and was co-editor in chief of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry from 2000 until 2007. Dr. Becker’s research focus has been on the impact of social and cultural environment on eating disorders and body image. She was also the lead investigator of research on the impact of television on the body image of teenage girls in Fiji. Dr. Becker is the author of Body, Self, and Society: The View from Fiji. In addition to her NIMH-funded research that investigates the contributions of social environment to risk for disordered eating, her current work also addresses the impact of rapid economic and social transition on a variety of youth health risk behaviors in Fiji. Dr. Becker has been awarded a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to complete a book based on this work during the 2008-2009 academic year.

Dr. Becker also is Director of the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. She serves on the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-V Eating Disorders Work Group, is Associate Editor for the International Journal of Eating Disorders, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Academy for Eating Disorders as Director for Teaching Days. She is clinically active in the eating disorders field, seeing patients for consultation, evaluation, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacologic management.

Courses Taught

Research Interests

  • Cultural mediation of disordered eating and body image
  • Impact of social and economic transition on youth health risk behaviors
  • Fiji

Current Projects

  • Social Transition and Risk for Disordered Eating

Select Publications

  • Jianlin J, Kleinman A, Becker AE. Suicide in contemporary China: A review of China’s distinctive suicide demographics in their sociocultural context. Harvard Review of Psychiatry 2001; 9:1-12.
  • Becker AE, Burwell RA, Gilman SE, Herzog DB, Hamburg P. Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged television exposure among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls. The British Journal of Psychiatry 2002, 180: 509-14.
  • Becker AE, Franko D, Speck A, Herzog DB. Ethnicity and differential access to care for eating disorder symptoms. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2003; 33:205-12 .
  • Rubin LR, Fitts ML, Becker AE. ‘Whatever feels good in my soul’: Body Ethics and Aesthetics Among African American and Latina Women. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2003; 27: 49-75.
  • Becker AE, Burwell RA, Navara K, Gilman SE. Binge-eating and binge-eating disorder in a small-scale indigenous society: The view from Fiji. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2003, 34:423-431.
  • Becker AE. Television, disordered eating, and young women in Fiji: Negotiating body image and identity during rapid social change. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2004; 28:533-59.
  • Becker AE, Gilman SE, Burwell RA. Changes in prevalence of overweight and in body image among Fijian women between 1989 and 1998. Obesity Research 2005; 13:110-7.
  • Becker AE, Fay, K, Gilman SE, Striegel-Moore, R. Facets of acculturation and their diverse relations to body concern in Fiji. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2007 40:42-50.
  • Franko DL, Becker AE, Thomas JJ, Herzog DB. Cross-ethnic differences in eating disorder symptoms and related distress. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2007; 40:156-64.
  • Becker AE. Culture and Eating Disorders Classification. International Journal of Eating Disorders 2007; 40 Suppl:S111-6.