Elizabeth A. Carpenter-Song

|Research Professor

Academic Appointments

Research Professor

As a medical and psychological anthropologist, my work aims to contribute to flows of knowledge and practice between anthropology and medicine. Over the course of my career, I have sought to attend closely to the lived experiences of those marginalized by mental illness, stigma, social exclusion, and poverty in the U.S. My scholarship is grounded in experience-based and meaning-centered approaches in medical and psychological anthropology, which aim to unite engagement with lived experiences of distress with attention to how structural forces produce and exacerbate suffering. Through ethnographic methods, I engage closely with individuals, families, and communities to examine lived experiences of illness and how people navigate through complex landscapes of care. In this work, I center issues of health equity by critically examining missed opportunities in clinical care and the high-stakes consequences that occur when systems of care fail those they are intended to help.

Since 2009, I have led a program of longitudinal ethnographic research with families experiencing homelessness in northern New England. This work is the subject of my book, Families on the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England. The longitudinal approach of this research enables insight into the constellation of structural, social, and personal factors that shape outcomes for families, with some achieving a fragile stability while others have been shattered by the impress of harmful systems, losses, and trauma. As an engaged scholar, I am working to translate insights from close attention to lived experiences of families into actionable recommendations for change to address the housing crisis and to improve health and wellbeing in the region. My research on rural homelessness has led me to pursue additional research focused on intersections of rurality and health.

Another key area of my recent research examines digital technologies as a new treatment paradigm in mental health. This research has been guided by anthropological approaches that emphasize lived experience and underscore the complexity of psychiatric recovery. In this body of work, I have led a multidisciplinary research team to conduct multi-sited ethnographic research to examine how persons with serious mental illnesses understand and use technology in their everyday lives; put forth arguments for the need for technology-based approaches in mental health care to be oriented toward meaningful recovery and attentive to health equity; and led the development, implementation, and evaluation of an innovative approach to supporting persons with serious mental illnesses to use digital technologies to support recovery.

Throughout my career, I have sought to build connections between anthropology and medicine. To that end, much of my work is deeply collaborative. My longstanding interests in the culture of biomedicine and commitment to applying anthropological approaches within medicine directly inform my research collaborations with colleagues in medicine, health services research, and public health as well as my work co-leading the Dartmouth Healthcare Foundations program, a suite of educational offerings designed to address endemic challenges in contemporary healthcare by centering humanistic approaches in the work of care.

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Contact

Elizabeth.A.Carpenter-Song@dartmouth.edu

603-646-3336

HB 6047

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
PhD, 2007, Case Western Reserve University
M.A., 2004, Case Western Reserve University
A.B., 2001 Dartmouth College

Selected Publications

Sosin, Anne N., & Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth A. 2024. Reimagining Rural Health Equity: Understanding Disparities And Orienting Policy, Practice, And Research In Rural America. Health Affairs, 43(6), 791-797.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2023. Families on the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2020. Promoting meaningful recovery with digital mental health care. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 29, e105.
Sosin, Anne N. & Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2020. Village Versus Virus: Rural Ethos Protects Where Public Health Fails. Health Affairs Forefront.

Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2019. "The kids were my drive": Shattered Families, Moral Striving, and the Loss of Parental Selves in the Wake of Homelessness. Ethos 47:54-72.
Snell-Rood, Claire and Elizabeth Carpenter-Song. 2018. Depression in a Depressed Area: Deservingness, Mental Illness, and Treatment in the Contemporary Rural U.S. Social Science and Medicine 219:78-86.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth and Claire Snell-Rood. 2016. The Changing Context of the Rural U.S.: A Call to Examine the Impacts of Social Change and Rising Social Inequality on Mental Health and Mental Health Care. Psychiatric Services 68(5):503-506.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth, Joelle Ferron, and Sara Kobylenski. 2016. Social Exclusion and Survival for Families Facing Homelessness in Rural New England. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless 25(1):41-52.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2015. Putting Meaning into Medicine: Why Context Matters in Psychiatry. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences 24(4):292-295.
Willen, Sarah and Elizabeth Carpenter-Song. 2013. Guest Editors, Special Issue. Cultural Competence in Action: 'Lifting the Hood' on Four Case Studies in Medical Education. Culture Medicine and Psychiatry 37(2):241-252.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth, Edward Chu, Robert Drake, Mieka Ritsema, Beverly Smith, and Hoyt Alverson. 2010. Ethno-cultural Variations in the Experience and Meaning of Mental Illness and Treatment: Implications for Access and Utilization. Transcultural Psychiatry 47:224-251.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2009. Children's Sense of Self in Relation to Clinical Processes: Portraits of Pharmaceutical Transformation. Ethos 37:257-281.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth. 2009. Caught in the Psychiatric Net: Meanings and Experiences of ADHD, Pediatric Bipolar Disorder, and Mental Health Treatment among Families in the United States. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 33(1):61-85.
Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth, Megan Nordquest, and Jeffrey Longhofer. 2007. Cultural Competence Re-examined: Critique and Directions for the Future." Psychiatric Services 58:1362-1365.

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Elizabeth A. Carpenter-Song

Research Professor

Contact

Education

Selected Publications

Courses

Elizabeth A. Carpenter-Song

Research Professor

Contact

Education

Selected Publications

Courses

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