Molly Hales MD, PhD
Molly Hales completed an MD/PhD in Medical Anthropology through the UCSF Medical Scientist Training Program. As a clinician-social scientist, Dr. Hales is broadly interested in using social theory to better understand and address the most intractable issues in health and healthcare, with a focus on inflammatory skin disorders such as Hidradenitis Suppurativa and Atopic Dermatitis. The first to combine medical anthropology with dermatology, she is actively pioneering the field of dermato-anthropology.
Dr. Hales’s postdoctoral research explores changing understandings of the skin as they are manifest in inflammatory skin disorders and their treatments, under the mentorship of medical anthropologist Megan Crawley-Matoka. She is also piloting a collaborative global health research project looking at microbial dysbiosis and immune dysregulation as drivers of disease progression in lymphatic filariasis in an endemic region of coastal Ghana, under the direction of dermatology researcher Dr. Alan Zhou and biological anthropologist Dr. Katherine Amato. Under the mentorship of health services researcher Dr. Tara Lagu, she and Alecia Blaczak are conducting research into the barriers to receiving dermatologic care faced by medically obese patients in the United States.
Prior to coming to Northwestern, Dr. Hales conducted Fulbright-funded research on gender-related health disparities among public primary care clinics serving the Xhosa population of the rural Transkei region of South Africa. She also conducted research in collaboration with Yupiit natives in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of southwestern Alaska, and has published on the importance of tribal autonomy and environmental justice to the physical and emotional health of Alaska Natives. Her dissertation research explored changing American death rituals, with a focus on the use of digital media to maintain ongoing relationships with the dead.
Publications
Books
In progress. Vital Ties: Mourning and Digital Media.
Book Chapters
2016. Native Sovereignty by the Numbers: The metrics of Yup’ik behavioral health programs. In Metrics: What Counts in Global Health. Vincanne Adams, ed. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
2024. Zhang Y, Hales MK, Lipman RE, Quan VL, Zhou XA, Nguyen CV. Allergic contact dermatitis masquerading as retiform purpura. Contact Dermatitis. 2024 Jan 4.
2023. Kye Y, Hales M, See SHC, Nguyen CV. Sarcoidal Granuloma Annulare-Like Dermatitis and Vasculitis With Granulomatous Features: An Atypical Case of Giant Cell Arteritis. American Journal of Dermatopathology. 2023 Sep 1;45(9):654-657.
2019. Hales, Molly. Animating Relations: Digitally Mediated Intimacies between the Living and the Dead. Cultural Anthropology 34(2):187-212.
Selected Essays, Interviews, and Reviews
2016. Hales, Molly. Native Sovereignty by the Numbers: The metrics of Yup’ik behavioral health programs. In Metrics: What Counts in Global Health. Vincanne Adams, ed. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
2015. Hales, Molly and Seth Holmes. Book Review: What Cancer Teaches Us About Ourselves. PLOS Medical Journals’ Community Blog: Speaking of Medicine. February 18, 2015.