How a ‘national genome’ can reinforce social inequality, with Emily Vasquez ’06, ethnographer of science, medicine, and public health

Catalyze

Emily Vasquez ’06 joined Catalyze on the Saturday afternoon of the 2022 Morehead-Cain Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill this past October. Earlier that morning, she delivered a SEVEN Talk entitled, “The Social Life,” to over 500 Forum attendees.
During this episode, recorded on campus in the Pit, Emily shares with scholar host Elias Guedira ’25 about her ethnography research in Mexico and its parallels to the U.S. healthcare system. Her work investigates how the development of a national human genome has exacerbated social inequalities.
Emily is a Bridge to the Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she teaches courses on the sociology of health and medicine and on race and ethnicity in scientific and medical practice. Her research examines how social inequalities are entangled with and reinforced through the production of medical knowledge and technologies. Emily’s work has been published in the journals Engaging Science, Technology, and Society; American Anthropologist; Perspectives on Science; and Medicine, Anthropology, Theory, among others.
Watch Emily’s SEVEN Talk from the 2022 Alumni Forum.

Music credits

The intro music is by Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul. The ending song is “We Bubbles,” by Freedom Trail Studio (YouTube Audio Library).

How to listen

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Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at [e-mail].