Ellen J. Salkeld

With a background in public health, non-profit health services evaluation, medical anthropology and clinical research, exploring human health behavior from multiple perspectives has been at the center of Ellen Salkeld’s eclectic career. She earned a Master’s Degree in Public Health Education from Central Michigan University, a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Wayne State University, and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in clinical research at the Program for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. Both pre-doctoral and post-doctoral work was funded through National Research Training Awards from the NIH.

Dr. Salkeld holds an abiding interest in Integrative Medicine, a burgeoning discipline that combines biomedicine with Complementary and Alternative medicine in western health care settings.  Much of her research has sought to understand diversity in both consumer’s and provider’s conceptualizations health and illness, and the resulting influence on personal health behavior.  Moreover, she is interested in contextualizing individual’s experience of clinical medicine within the larger health care system, supporting translational research that re-locates successful healthcare strategies.

In collaboration with academic colleagues, Dr. Salkeld initiated and is current chairperson of the Society for Social Studies of CAM and IM, a special interest group of the Society for Medical Anthropology.  She enjoys outdoor activities with her husband and two rescue greyhounds.