Colleen Walsh

Colleen C. Walsh received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. Her dissertation research examined the concept of `social capital' among community gardeners in Cleveland to explore the ways in which perceptions and experiences of `social capital' vary by race, class, gender, and neighborhood and contribute to an understanding of the influence of culture and context on community development projects such as community gardens. As a medical anthropologist focused on urban health, Dr. Walsh has conducted broad research on many health related and cultural topics and is interested in racial and ethnic disparities in health, social and cultural capital, and the use of anthropological and political economic models to try to illuminate causes of and solutions to health problems associated with urban living. Prior to starting her position as Assistant Professor in the School of Health Sciences at Cleveland State University, she served as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University and as Research Associate at the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods (www.prchn.org) in the CWRU School of Medicine where she contributed to the Center's core research project, Freshlink. She continues to collaborate on research around nutrition equity with colleagues at the Swetland Center for Environmental Health at CWRU SoM. She has served as Co-Principal Investigator for ARCHES, the AmeRicans' Conceptions of Health Equity Study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (https://arches.chip.uconn.edu/). ARCHES is a multi-year mixed-methods study involving a multidisciplinary team of researchers that explores views of health and racial equity and health-related deservingness among people from a range of backgrounds, how these perspectives change over time, and what leads people to action to improve health equity.