The Sam Dubal Memorial Lecture on Racial Justice in Medical Anthropology and Global Health

Yara M. Asi, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the School of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, DAWN MENA, a 2020-2021 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the West Bank, and co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights. Her research agenda focuses on health, human rights, and development in conflict-affected and fragile settings. She is the author of How War Kills: The Overlooked Threats to Our Health (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), articles in multiple peer-reviewed journals, and essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.

Sam Dubal joined the UW Department of Anthropology faculty in September 2020, and his future at the University was full of promise. He came to the UW with an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, a PhD in medical anthropology from UC-Berkeley and UW-San Francisco, and an MD from Harvard Medical School. Unfortunately, Sam went missing on Mt. Rainier in October 2020 despite an extensive search of the mountain.

A sociocultural anthropologist with a focus in medical anthropology, Dubal had hoped to encourage the medical community to seek a more holistic understanding of the causes of various health issues, including the systemic racism that can lead to chronic health problems or even fatal gunshot wounds. He believed that the medical community must confront the bigger picture to adequately treat patients. Dubal is the author of Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army, published in 2018 by Oakland: University of California Press.

The Sam Dubal Memorial Lecture on Racial Justice in Medical Anthropology and Global Health Lecture Series has been developed to honor Sam Dubal’s vision for racial justice in medicine. Building on his incredible spirit and fierce intellect, the Department of Anthropology hopes students, community members, and fellow scholars will be inspired to become activist scholars like Dubal, directly addressing racism and other inequities that fuel health disparities.