Amy Fairchild, PhD

I am a historian of public health who works at the intersection of the social history, politics, and ethics of public health policy. I served on the faculty of Columbia University’s Mailman School for 20 years, where I received two awards for teaching. I served as Dean of the College of Public Health at The Ohio State University during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most recently, I was a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I use history as a means of understanding contemporary ethical and policy conflicts. My current work, which has been funded by the Commonwealth Fund, Mellon Foundation, and NSF, focuses on the backlash against public health, from the pandemic to the present. In addition to books on the immigration, surveillance, tobacco, and public health ethics, my articles have appeared in journals including Science, NEJM, JAMA, Health Affairs, and AJPH.