Helena Hansen
Assistant Professor of AnthropologyAssistant Professor of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine
MD, Ph.D. 2005 Yale; A.B. 1992 Harvard
Office Address:
Rufus D. Smith Hall
25 Waverly Place
Room 608
New York, NY 10003
Email:
Phone: (212) 998-8189
Areas of Research/Interest
medical anthropology, science studies, urban anthropology, critical psychiatry, addictions, pharmaceuticals, Latin American and African American spirituality and faith healing.
Publications
In Press Hansen H: “’The New Masculinity’: Addiction Treatment as a Reconstruction of Gender in Puerto Rican Evangelist Street Ministries.” Social Science and Medicine
In Press Hansen H: “Pharmaceutical Evangelism and Spiritual Capital: An American Tale of Two Communities of Addicted Selves.” In Anthropologies of Addiction: Science, Therapy and Subjectivity, Rakhiel and Hyde, Eds. Duke University Press
2010 Barry D, Irwin K, Jones E, Becker W, Tetrault J, Sullivan L, Hansen H, O’Connor P, Schottenfeld R, and D Fiellin: “Opioids, Chronic Pain, and Addiction in Primary Care.” Journal of Pain 11(12):1442-50
2009 Barry D, Irwin K, Jones E, Becker W, Tetrault J, Sulllivan L, Hansen H, O’Connor P, Schottenfeld, R, and D Fiellin: “Integrating Buprenorphine Treatment into Office-Based Practice: A Qualitative Study.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 24(2):218-25
2009 Alarcón RD, Becker AE, Lewis-Fernández R, Like RC, Desai P, Foulks E, Gonzales J, Hansen H, Kopelowicz A, Lu FG, Oquendo MA, Primm A; Cultural Psychiatry Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry “Issues for DSM-V: The role of culture in psychiatric diagnosis.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 2009 Aug;197(8):559-660
2008 Hansen H: “Bipolar Disorder as Culture Bound Syndrome: A Book Review.” American Journal of Psychiatry, Resident’s Edition, 165(10):A44-5
2006 Alegria M, Page JB, Hansen H, Cauce AM, Robles R. Blanco C, Cortes DE, Amaro H,
Morales A, Berry P: "Improving drug treatment services for Hispanics: research gaps and scientific opportunities." Drug and Alcohol Dependence 84 Suppl 1:S76-84.
2006 Reisman AB, Hansen H, Rastegar, A. 2006 "The craft of writing: a physician-writer's workshop for resident physicians." Journal of General Internal Medicine 21(10):1109-11.
2005 Hansen H: "Isla Evangelista-a Story of Church and State: Puerto Rico's Faith-Based Initiatives." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 29(4):433-56.
2004 Hansen H: “Faith-Based Treatment for Addiction in Puerto Rico.” JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) 291(23):2882.
2004 Hansen H, Alegría M, Peña M, et al.: “Drug Treatment, Health and Social Service Utilization by Substance Abusing Women from a Community-Based Sample.” Medical Care 42(11):1117-1124.
2003 Hansen H and N Groce: “Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Quarantine in Cuba.” JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) 290(21):2875.
2003 Alegria M, Page B, Hansen H, Cauce AM, Robles R, Blanco C, Cortes D, Amaro H, Morales A, and P Berry.: “Improving Dug Treatment Services for Hispanics.” National Strategic Plan on Hispanic Drug Abuse Research. National Hispanic Science Network and Institute on Urban Health Research, Boston.
2002 Hansen H, Lopez-Iftikhar M, and Alegria M: “Economy of Risk and Respect: Accounts of HIV Risk Taking among Puerto Rican Sex Workers.” Journal of Sex Research 39(4):292-301.
2001 Hansen H and Groce N: “From Quarantine to Condoms: Shifting Policies and Problems of HIV Control in Cuba.” Medical Anthropology 19:259-292.
2001 Rebhun LA and Hansen H: “Rural Drug Use.” In Handbook of Rural Health, S. Loue and B. Quill, Eds., Kluwer Academic Press, New York.
Under review:
Hansen H: Addicted to Christ: Spiritual Capital and Masculinity in Puerto Rican Pentecostal Addiction Ministries. (Book manuscript)
Hansen H, Siegel C, Bertollo D, Case B, DiRocco D, and M Galanter: “Two Tiers of Addiction Treatment? A Social Area Analysis of Buprenorphine and Methadone for Opiate Dependence in New York City by Income and Ethnicity.” (at Medical Care)
Hansen H, Donaldson Z, Bates L, Bearman P, Keely Cheslak-Postava K, Harper K, Holmes S, Link B, Lovasi G, Springer K, and J Teitler: “Integrating biosocial models into revisions of the DSM: Urgent need for population health findings to guide psychiatric research and diagnosis.” (at Health Affairs)
Hansen H, Rodriguez J, Hansen B, Rebhun LA, and T George: “Clinical comparison of faith-based with biopsychosocial treatment for male drug abusers in Puerto Rico.” (at American Journal of Addictions)
Current News and Projects
updated August 2011
Documentary Film on Addiction Treatment and Ethnic Marketing of Pharmaceuticals
I am completing production for my Robert Wood Johnson supported film on the creation of two tiers of treatment for opiate addiction in America (i.e. methadone clinics for poor Blacks and Latinos, and a newer drug buprenorphine in private doctors’ offices for high income Whites). I expect to move into post-production (editing) mode soon and have benefitted from the good advice of Culture and Media program staff.
Structural Stigma and Structural Competency
I will be collaborating with Jonathan Metzl, affiliate of the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and Director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt, on a new project to promote the concept of structural competency in medical education. This concept involves moving beyond the idea of cultural competency – that health care providers should be skillful in taking patients’ individual cultural backgrounds into account – toward the idea that disparities in health and health care emerge from structural (political economic, institutional) factors that reinforce the negative health effects of poverty and powerlessness. Simultaneously I am working with the NYU Psychiatry Residenty Program and with Community Solutions to develop an educational intervention for NYU psychiatry residents on structural competency, namely an elective clinical rotation that will bring residents to Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York with among the highest rates of homelessness, mental illness, incarceration and foster care in the City. These psychiatry residents will do clinical work in the homes and community organizations of people and families who are at risk of homelessness due to mental health problems, but will also examine the organization of the systems, health care and otherwise that impact on their patients, and begin to conceptualize systems level interventions. I am also conceptualizing a role for resident collaboration with NYU social science students in this project.
On the topic of structural stigma I am a participant in a Robert Wood Johnson supported working group on stigma led by Mark Hatzenbueler, Bruce Link and Jo Phelan of Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. The group is organizing a conference and special issue on the topic of processes by which people are stigmatized and thereby have negative health outcomes based on factors such as mental health diagnoses, gender and sexual orientation, ethnicity and race as well as social class and status position. I am working with them to link the idea of structural competency to the idea of structural stigma, which looks at institutional, political economic mechanisms by which stigma leads to poor health.
