Chelsey R. Carter, PhD, MPH

Chelsey R. Carter is an Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health with a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Black feminist anthropologist of medicine, public health, and race from St. Louis, Missouri. Her scholarship examines the relationship(s) between social and structural determinants of health and rare neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and motor neuron diseases (MND). Carter has a background in anthropology and public health, with specific training and expertise in ethnographic research, mixed-methods, community-engaged methodologies, and applied public health interventions. Her most recent research on race and ALS informs her first book project, Witnessing ALS: Anti-Blackness, Race, and Care in the World of Rare Disease (under contract with University of California Press). This book centers on the experiences of Black people living with ALS (and their families), scientific knowledge production, and how embodied inequality impacts diagnosis, treatment, and engagement in clinical trials.

Her other research projects investigate precision medicine and genomic research in Black communities (The Black Genome Project) and caregiving among persons impacted by ALS. Her scholarship has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Andrew Mellon Foundation, Wenner Gren Foundation, and more. Her public and scholarly work has been published in public and peer-reviewed outlets such as Scientific American, St. Louis Post Dispatch, American Anthropologist, Medical Decision Making, Annals of Neurology, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and more.

She is the Founder and Director of The LEITH (Lived Experiences Igniting Transformations in Health) Lab, a hub that addresses the social and structural determinants of health in rare neurodegenerative and genetic diseases, in honor of anthropologist Dr. Leith Mullings. Carter is also a documentarian and co-directed/co-produced her first film, Witnessing, on the lives of three underrepresented families in the ALS ecosystem. Through the lab, she also curates "art meets science" exhibits and disseminates her research through multi-modal formats that reach academic, public, and community audiences.