YSPH-SBS 525 Seminar Series: Dr. Andrew Wooyoung Kim, University of California, Berkeley: "Lifecourse and Intergenerational Health Consequences of Historical Trauma from South African Apartheid"

Andrew Wooyoung Kim is a biological anthropologist interested in the lifecourse and intergenerational health consequences of historical trauma and the contributions of such knowledge to movements for collective healing and racial justice. Dr. Kim’s current research traces the stress physiological mechanisms underlying the intergenerational effects of trauma and political violence from apartheid, as well as processes of reversibility and healing, in Soweto and Johannesburg, South Africa. His work explores these questions in collaboration with a 30-year project called “Birth to Thirty,” a birth cohort study based in Soweto & Johannesburg, South Africa that enrolled over 3000 pregnant women during the dissolution of the apartheid regime and has since documented the lives of these families across multiple generations. His secondary research combines ethnographic and epidemiological research to examine the lived experience of psychiatric patients and healthcare workers, population mental health trends, and solutions for improving public mental healthcare systems in post-colonial and marginalized settings.