Arachu Castro, PhD, MPH

Educational History

  • 1988: MA University of Barcelona (History and Social Anthropology)
  • 1988: RD Polytechnic Institute of Barcelona (Nutrition)
  • 1996: PhD École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (Ethnology and Social Anthropology)
  • 1997: PhD University of Barcelona (Sociology)
  • 1998: MPH Harvard School of Public Health (International Health)

Arachu Castro, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Associate Professor of Social Medicine in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Senior Advisor for Mexico and Guatemala at Partners In Health, and Medical Anthropologist in the Division of Global Health Equity in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. 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. She teaches social medicine and medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and has taught in Spain, Argentina, France, Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. At the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, she serves on the Policy Committee and is Co-Chair of the Cuban Studies Program. She is a faculty associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

As a medical anthropologist trained in public health, Dr. Castro works mostly in infectious disease and women's health in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has worked in Mexico, Argentina, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic, and is expanding her research to Brazil, Nicaragua, and other countries through The Latin America and Caribbean Initiative for the Integration of Prenatal Care with the Testing and Treatment of HIV and Syphilis (ILAP), which she directs in collaboration with UNICEF, UNAIDS, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and eight national AIDS programs (Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru). The operational research objectives of ILAP are to: 1) qualitatively analyze the current status of prenatal care and services to diagnose and treat HIV and syphilis; 2) inform, support, and monitor the required changes to reach the integration of prenatal care with the testing and treatment of HIV and syphilis as countries implement their national strategy. The aim of ILAP is to contribute to the integration of prenatal care with the diagnosis and management of HIV and syphilis and to improve PMTCT efforts among participating countries. ILAP works in coordination with the PAHO and UNICEF Regional Initiative for the Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Congenital Syphilis in Latin America and the Caribbean. ILAP is establishing a model of South-South collaboration to strengthen HIV/syphilis and maternal and child health research capacity in the Latin American and Caribbean region and to tackle other regional challenges in the scale-up of comprehensive HIV care and in the provision of maternal and child health in a concerted and systematic manner. New components are being progressively incorporated in interested countries, such as severe maternal morbidity to prevent maternal mortality, cervical cancer, malaria, tuberculosis, and heart disease.

She is a member of the Working Group on Scale Up of the UN Interagency Task Team on Prevention of HIV Infection among Pregnant Women, Mothers and their Children and of the WHO Team on Development of Appropriate Research Strategies for Scale Up of Antiretroviral Therapy in Resource-Constrained Settings, and has served on the Steering Committee on Social, Economic, and Behavioral Research at the UN Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), on the Scientific Working Group on Tuberculosis (TDR), and on the Public Health Watch International Advisory Board (Open Society Institute). At the Society for Medical Anthropology, Dr. Castro was the Secretary-Treasurer (2003-2006) and chair of the Critical Anthropology of Health Caucus (1998-2002). She is in the editorial boards of PLoS Medicine, PLoS ONE, The Open Health Services & Policy Journal, and Salud Colectiva.

Dr. Castro has published a book on social and nutritional anthropology, (Saber bien: Cultura y prácticas alimentarias en la Rioja, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos 1998), an edited volume on medical anthropology (Unhealthy Health Policy: A Critical Anthropological Examination, Altamira Press 2004, with Merrill Singer) and several articles in medical, public health, and anthropology journals. She has been actively involved in designing several international health policy documents on tuberculosis, AIDS, and access to health care in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO) and PAHO, such as The Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis (Geneva: WHO, 2001), Scaling Up Health Systems to Respond to the Challenge of HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: PAHO, 2003), Barrio Adentro: Right to Health and Social Inclusion in Venezuela (Caracas: PAHO, 2006), and Challenges Posed by the HIV Epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean 2009 (Washington, DC: PAHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, 2009), of which she was co-author and editor.

She received her Ph.D. in Ethnology and Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Barcelona, a Masters in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health, and a professional degree in Nutrition from the Polytechnic Institute of Barcelona.

Dr. Castro is the recipient of the 2005 Rudolf Virchow Award of the Critical Anthropology of Health Caucus of the Society for Medical Anthropology, the 2009 Burke Global Health Fellowship of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, the 2010 Harvard Catalyst Program for Faculty Development and Diversity Faculty Fellowship of Harvard Medical School, and the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Medicine and Health of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York for her work on Women and AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Courses Taught

Research Interests

  • Social inequalities embodied as differential risk for pathologies common among the poor
  • Effect of health policies on epidemic disease among poor populations
  • Infectious disease
  • Women's health
  • Latin America and the Caribbean

Current Projects

  • The Latin American and Caribbean Initiative for the Integration of Prenatal Care with the Testing and Treatment of HIV and Syphilis
  • The impact of antiretroviral therapy on quality of life of people with HIV in Cuba
  • Community-based accompaniment with supervised antiretrovirals in Lima, Peru (PI: Sonya Shin)
  • Laboratory turnaround time project: Analysis of the flow of blood specimens and tests results for HIV and syphilis during prenatal care in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua
  • Multisite ethnographic study of sexually transmitted infections among pregnant women and their partners in five indigenous communities in Mexico
  • Maternal mortality project in the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Haiti
  • Strategies for the elimination of congenital syphilis through Prenatal Care in Cuba

Select Publications

grouppic Dr. Castro appears with (left to right) Maureen Connolly, Sangeeta Sakaria, and Simin Lee at Altagracia Maternity Hospital, the national reference maternity hospital in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. Credit: Thomas H. Lee, MD.